


Silvertongue

by myadamantiumheart



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Steve Rogers, F/M, Slow Burn, cis fem steve rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:52:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 48,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myadamantiumheart/pseuds/myadamantiumheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Loki’s crimes were cut short, Thor’s capacity to hope is endless, Frigga is the real boss of Asgard, Stephanie Grace Rogers is far snarkier than the American press would like you to believe, and Bucky Barnes has to wonder what it is about space that makes all these extraterrestrials so damn cocky. </p><p>A softer world AU- or, an alternate universe in which a less murderous Loki learns how to not be a jackass all of the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Marriage of Jane and Thor

**Author's Note:**

> So... hi, guys? It's been, what, almost two years since I've posted anything? I'd like to say I have a good explanation for my disappearance from the internet, but the truth is just simply that I had a terribly difficult string of health crises and, well, depression and anxiety can be a real bitch and a half. I haven't managed to get myself back into fandom for these two years because every time I've tried, I've been kind of consumed by anxiety about it, and I had no idea how to explain the two lifetimes it seems like I've lived between my relative disappearance and now. And I have to say I'm truly sorry if, when I disappeared, it felt like I left you hanging. Because truthfully I did it less than gracefully and I probably was incredibly selfish about it. I don't want to seem like I'm using depression or anxiety as an excuse, but merely stating them as the reason why I've been neglecting my online life. 
> 
> However, when I found this plot bunny lying around in my google drive a few days ago, something really overtook me, and I found myself writing and writing and writing at it. It's nearly finished, even, so that should be a relief to those who find my basically abandoned WIP's have broken their hearts. I do want to finish my WIP's, but I don't know how long it will take. 
> 
> I'm not sure this means I'm returning to fandom or not, but, as with all mental struggles, and with all health struggles, I'm going to take this one day at a time. 
> 
> And regardless of all this babbling on about reasons and forgotten plot bunnies- I hope you enjoy this.

There are many things Stephanie Rogers has done in her life (her impossibly long life) that she would deem brave- and many more that she would deem foolish. (If you were to ask a certain James Buchanan Barnes, more than half of those things overlap.) She had never been one to shy away from the harder words, nor the harsher truths- never one to back down from a fight, whether she could reasonably win it or not. And it was often not until long after the event had actually happened that she would be able to qualify it in the brave, foolish, or ‘ridiculous combination of both’ column. 

This, she felt, was something she could classify right away- agreeing to be the Asgardian equivalent of a best man in Thor’s wedding was not one of her better ideas, especially considering that she had absolutely no clue about Asgardian customs, and even less of a clue about how to not cause an interplanetary diplomatic crisis. But she loved Thor, in an inexplicable way, and when he had grasped her hand in that earnest manner of his, it had been hard to keep a yes from slipping through her lips. She loved Thor for all of his gentle, softly brilliant ways, for his smiles and the understanding tilt of his head, for all the times he had helped her feel as though she wasn’t just a girl stranded out of time, and Thor loved Jane- so it was that she had agreed to help him make that love a permanent one in the eyes of the Norns. 

In half a decade of fighting beside each other, Thor had rarely brought his comrades within the ranks of the Avengers up to his homeland. Various reasons made this, to say the least,  _ unwise- _ at first, he had been recently exiled for his foolish adolescent ways.  And then there had been heartbreak, poisonous distrust, after Loki imploded in such a way that the entirety of Asgard nearly lay in ruins. It was the greatest mercy of the Norns that Thor had found Loki where he fell amongst the stars, before the great, furiously building shadow of Thanos could rest permanently across his bitter visage. And back from the stars Thor had brought the sullen boy, trapping Loki in a glass cage and letting Frigga sit in silence beside him for days, weeks, months where Stephanie did not see Thor smile. 

There had never been a moment since that Stephanie had felt like she could ask to see where her brother in arms had spent his childhood days. For one, shortly after Thanos had taken things into his own hands and sent the Chitauri to bash Earth into rubble, she’d been invested in bringing her own brother back from the shadows. For another, once Bucky had returned to them as much as he probably ever would, Thor was back at her side to fight the menace of Ultron and they didn’t have the type of downtime that would lend itself to pleasurable vacations. It seemed that for the past five years all they had done was train beside one another and expend themselves past the point of exhaustion trying to keep their planet from collapsing. 

But now here she is, wearing ridiculously shiny armor that somehow goes well with her shield (which she’d refused to leave behind), watching Thor introduce the rest of the team and their assorted friends to what she assumes is the royal court. Tony somehow manages to not quite offend the king and queen as he’s introduced, and Pepper charms them both enough to smooth over any rough patches her boyfriend might have created. Bruce is, of course, polite to a fault and nearly soft spoken enough that only Odin and Frigga can hear him at all. Darcy and Jane have already gotten out of this by virtue of having been introduced a few years ago, and they try their hardest not to laugh from the sidelines when Clint can’t help himself and curtsies. Natasha smacks him surreptitiously, and when she’s introduced Frigga’s smile widens just this side of imperceptibly. Coulson receives almost more respect from the king and queen than he gives, which Stephanie figures is due to the fact that he’d had quite a large role in ensuring Thor’s place on the team. That, and Thor never ceases to speak of Coulson’s bravery from the years when he faced down both of the Odin-sons. 

By the time the procession moves to her, she’s doing her best not to be distracted by the constant swirl of people around the edges of the room. She keeps catching glimpses of, something green and silver, something lurking around the corners, but she can’t turn and see what it is, or discern why her spine is prickling every time she catches that little bit of color. It’s too familiar, and she itches to confirm its shape.

“And this,” Thor says grandly, waving his hand in a proud gesture towards her before clapping her shoulder nearly hard enough to unbalance her, “is the brave Captain Stephanie. She has fought more nobly than any warrior I have ever called shield-brethren, and I am honored she has chosen to be party to my house in this engagement.”  

“Pleased to meet you, your majesties,” she says, dipping her head respectfully, and Odin’s one eye seems far more piercing than she’d anticipated. It’s unsettling. Frigga, though, is looking at her so softly it’s nearly disconcerting, and her hand touches Stephanie’s shoulder beneath its armor after a moment. Odin is moving on, speaking to the court before they enter the feast hall, but Frigga’s hand stays there, her eyes piercing through Stephanie, like a force pulling layer after layer away from her very heart. She can see that green and silver thing out of the corner of her eye again, flickering and wavering, and she can see the rest of the group congregating away from her, and Frigga leans in close enough that Stephanie can smell her otherworldly perfume. 

“Stephanie, I would thank you for standing at my son’s side in war and peacetime. He can be foolhardy, headstrong, and though I do not doubt his strength, sometimes I doubt his wisdom. You are harboring a hurt out of time and out of place, standing far older than your true years with ice inside of you, and yet you are no less an honorable warrior, no less a shield-sister to Thor. Know that you have the court of Asgard behind your shield, Captain, and know that you have a mother’s thanks.” 

“I- thank you, your majesty,” Stephanie manages, taken aback. “Really, it’s just my job. Thor is a welcome teammate, and he does no less for me than I do for him.” Frigga’s smile grew, and she nodded her head slightly. 

“You are humble, Stephanie, and though I cannot tell true details, I know this: a son of Frigga needs your steady shield, and your honest heart, and your merciful hand. You are a warrior unparalleled in virtue, as Thor has said.” Frigga’s mouth quirked, and she grasped Stephanie’s shoulder a little harder, turning her slightly so they could walk side by side. “I have no doubt that all the trials you have yet to face will be triumphs for you. Now, come, I believe there is an engagement to celebrate and a ball to be had.” 

And that’s weird, isn’t it, having your teammate’s mother tell you vague prophecies as you prepare to enter an extraterrestrial ballroom. Truly, she hadn’t even known whether or not Asgard would greet her with warmth. There had been many squabbles in the years since New York, over proposed alliances through marriage, or trade agreements, or even simply cosmic jurisdiction. 

She knows only a little of what had happened after that particular battle, when Thanos had finally brought the sickle of the Chitauri down upon them.  It had been with Loki’s reluctant warning only that they had predicted it, and he had come from his glass chamber down to stand finally against the false king who had tried to bend his tack-sharp mind. It was clear, in the aftermath, that there would be consequences for what Loki had revealed of his involvement with Thanos. Thor had taken a muzzled Loki back to Asgard, and she had watched a flash of light disappear the brothers, one with crazed, tired eyes and one with mourning in the set of his face. Thor had returned, and Loki had apparently been sentenced by Odin for his betrayals, his rebellions, and his devastating attempt on Midgard, ripped finally free from the furious delirium his fall had lent him.  Stephanie hadn’t ever been told what the punishment was exactly, only that it had been dealt, and dealt in a room Frigga had not even been present in.  

The betrayal hadn’t faded away from Thor’s eyes yet- perhaps it never would, but Stephanie knew exactly how difficult it could be to let someone go and she knew that Thor wasn’t particularly capable of that feat. None of what she knew stopped her from wondering where, exactly, Loki was. Especially now that she was a guest on what was, despite all accounts of his hidden parentage, his childhood home. And then- She had been asked by Thor, in all great seriousness, to stand at his left hand side in the wedding, a space she knew had once gone to Loki. A space that she knew Frigga must have once thought Loki would inhabit. So the warmth is unexpected, and the prophecy more so, but nothing is really quite as unexpected as walking into the ballroom to find one Loki Liesmith sitting across the table from her spot of honor. 

It’s one thing to imagine a confrontation,  a final but also first true meeting of faces with someone whose demons she fought to a bitter, bloody end. It’s quite another for it to be a locking of eyes like this, blue and green and a fire leaping throughout the room, flickering in her peripheral vision. She can imagine it the way she once had, the vicious way she might greet him, with barbs on her tongue and knives in her handshakes. Or another way she had dreamt it, that same gentleness she had gathered Bucky back into her arms with, when he told her of every last vein he had cut and every last light he had watched die in the eyes of an innocent. 

The truth of the matter is that it goes neither of those ways.

It is the custom, as Thor had told her, to announce each of the groom and bride’s parties of honor as they enter the banquet hall to take their place at the first festivity, a vast feast to honor the beginning of the nuptial week. Sometimes the parties were warriors from far off lands, and Earth was as far as Thor could have gotten. She’s slipping into that place of performance she used to inhabit, back in the day when they had her performing like a monkey for the troops, for morale. The voice booms out, one of the Warriors Three, she thinks, announcing her as Stephanie Josephsdottir. Later, Bucky will comment on how familiar it was, sitting there watching her act before she thought. 

“Sarahsdottir,” she says, quietly at first into the welcoming roar of Thor’s people, ushering her into their fold. “I am Sarahsdottir.” Frigga is already at her place beside Odin, the dais raised above the crowd, and it seems that she’s the only one who has noticed Stephanie’s objection. And there, with a million things happening at once, the green-green-green eyes watching her curiously and the kindness of Frigga’s smile and her burning protest echoing out into the din, she finds that the confrontation she had been imagining will never come to pass. Instead, Frigga’s hand raises, and like a wave the noise retreats back in an instant. 

“Captain,” Frigga says, her voice carrying out over the heads of warriors turning between the two of them like a tennis match. “I believe Volstagg has made a mistake, and for that I apologize. Please, welcome instead the Captain Stephanie Sarahsdottir to our tables, and to our cups.” 

Those green eyes flash like pennies falling into fountains with something that might be surprise, or amusement, or simply a trick of the light as the din rises again to overwhelm her, carry her to her rough hewn wooden chair so she might watch the rest of the wedding party enter the room. When the noise has settled slightly, the meal beginning and cups toasting on every side, Stephanie finally finds herself able to meet them. There are no knives, nor merciful, blind embraces. There is not a sudden loathing in the pit of her stomach, nor clashing blades between them. 

“Loki,” she says, her voice escaping rusty and unsure, as though she doesn’t know whether to ask how he’s been or reach right across the table and clock him in the jaw. It seems to make him laugh, cocking his head a little and inclining it politely towards her. 

“Darling Captain,” he says in that mockingly light way of his. His voice hasn’t changed from the polished silver tenor she once heard ring out over the battlefield where she watched her hometown laid low and spilled blood for it to be able to build back up. 

“Rude,” she replies mildly, finding that her heart isn’t beating nearly as fast as she had thought it might. The food is delicious, something hearty and unfamiliar (she’s not entirely sure she wants to know what it really is). It’s ten minutes, maybe, steady and slow eating, a soaking in of the revelry around her, before he speaks again. 

“You will be a far better complement to his house,” Loki says lowly, his graceful hands holding a goblet like they were sculpted to do just that. “A steady hand suits their love.” 

“A hand that never wavers is a hand never tested,” she says, after a minute of contemplation. It’s a bitter stone in her throat to think of Thor’s brother giving her this courtesy, a compliment she’s not entirely sure he means. That he might act like it’s his mercy letting her have this honor, speaking pretty, diplomatic words that sound wrong on his quick tongue. “And it’s a sour tune you’re singing, speaking someone else’s words.” 

“The golden things of the light belong in each other’s company,” Loki says. It’s the last thing he says to her all night, sitting silent and seemingly content to watch the revel the rages on around them. She doesn’t try to break the peace, certain it would only end with poisonous barbs and unpleasant memories dredged back up to the surface of what’s meant to be a celebration. He leaves before the clock strikes one, but the feasting continues until Stephanie’s sure Clint will have to roll his way back to the rooms, and Darcy is dozing off underneath the table with her hand resting gently around Stephanie’s ankle. She’s a light burden to bear when Stephanie carries her back to the chambers set aside for Jane’s party, and makes her way back through twisting hallways towards the chambers Thor’s party will be sleeping in. 

Tony, Bruce, Natasha, and Darcy are standing in for Jane’s party, with Erik giving her hand, whilst Stephanie, Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun will stand for Thor’s party, with Frigga welcoming Jane’s hand into their family. Thus, especially with Bucky sneaking in to sleep beside her in the groom’s chambers, Stephanie finds herself a little suffocated on all the testosterone in the party. So, though everyone else hadn’t managed to find slumber before three in the morning, four in the morning finds Stephanie watching the vastly different constellations from the balcony of the huge stone suite. The stars are strange up here in Asgard, swirling brighter and moving far faster than any she’d ever seen back on Earth. It’s unsettling, but it’s also beautiful- not unlike the gaze she’d felt on the side of her face earlier, during the feasting. 

When she finally returns to bed, Bucky murmurs gratefully at her warmth and curls around her like they used to in the coldest nights of New York winters. Sleep doesn’t find her easily, but eventually the green gaze can fade from her skin, and she slips into dreams of a city built upon the bones of the ones she’s left behind.

* * *

 

In another chamber, farther below the stars, inside glass walls, green eyes watch a stone ceiling and they wonder about a daughter who might claim her mother and reject her father until they wonder themselves to sleep.

* * *

 

The second day of festivities puts her in her element- battling, sparring out in the vast cornflower fields of Asgard. There’s nothing surprising in these ceremonies for her. Thor often speaks of the glory of battle in his homeland, the rush of physical contest. It’s clear that physical prowess is important for Thor to prove here, in this demonstration of his worthiness. In terms of the nuptial week, he had explained to Stephanie that all the events were, in some way, a test of the couple. 

“Nothing is simple on Asgard,” he had said, huge hand holding a coffee mug Stephanie wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t meant to be a serving dish for soup as the two of them stood in the kitchen, watching the younger members of the team playing tag out on the grass. “There is meaning, thousands of years of tradition, in every rite of the nuptial week.” 

“Tell me I can’t offend anyone overly and I’m sure I’ll do fine,” Stephanie had replied, leaning her head against his shoulder in the brief moment of calm. His laugh rumbled through her bones, warming her from the soles of her feet up. 

“The first night, all you must do is eat. The groom has to prove he can provide sustenance for his partner firstly with a feast,” Thor explained, one surprisingly gentle hand resting on the top of her still bed-mussed hair. “The second day is for battle, the proving of physical strength on the part of the greater warrior in the relationship. His or her house will demonstrate that they could battle to the deaths for the warrior’s lover.” 

“Tell me I won’t have to battle a bilgesnipe,” Stephanie had said, and Thor’s hand shook her head gently as he laughed again. 

“Nay,” he said, “And the third day you won’t have to do anything but watch. The third day is for mental abilities, when the smarter of the pair will prove they can use their brain to provide for their future. That is when Jane’s house must step forward. The fourth day is a testament to the pair’s teamwork, when my father will set upon us a task not unlike that which you have the young ones complete. A treasure hunt of sorts.” He hummed into his coffee, amusement tinging his voice. “I’m certain Odin will have something challenging for us. The fifth day is is a ceremony of truth, but neither party must participate. That is simply something for Jane and I to do, to present ourselves to the Norns. The sixth will be the ceremony of binding, where you will stand at my side, and then as the clock strikes midnight upon that sixth day, we will enter the day of celebration.” 

“To prove you can drink each other under the table?” Stephanie had laughed, stepping back from the window to set her coffee mug in the sink. Thor’s smile had been brilliant in that moment, a light peeking out from beneath the fog of the morning. 

“To prove that we can make one another happy,” he said softly, and Stephanie had been unable to stop herself from reaching up and patting Thor gently on his stubble cheek. 

“A task you are most worthy of,” she’d said, uncharacteristically formally, before leaving the kitchen. Bucky never tired of saying that Stephanie was a grade A sucker for love, and he was right. There wasn’t a love story alive that couldn’t make her heart clench up and her eyes tear a little. And when it was her brother in arms there, beaming sunshine over the woman he loved, this was doubly true. 

Now she stands in a field of blue, her shield held loosely in one hand and a surprisingly light stone sword with gleaming golden paint on it in the other. Thor is to her right, Fandral to her left. Hogun and Volstagg stand proudly on the other side, and a small army of faceless, masked Asgardians stand before her. 

“The task is simple,” Odin booms out over the gathered crowd watching them. Jane and her ‘house’ sit on cushions at his feet, Frigga braiding cornflowers from the fields into her hair. “Each touch of paint is fatality, and your house must prove to us that you are capable in battle of protecting the good doctor.” The heat of the sun is strong on their backs, flowers gently waving in the breeze as the silence stretches on like a string of pouring honey. Golden paint drips from her sword in slow motion as she swings it up into a fighting position, less unwieldy than she might expect from a weapon she had never used. Odin’s smile widens at her motion- he waves his hand imperiously, every bit the pompous king that she’d pegged him for, and the sound of a drum echoes out over the blue. Thor’s grin flashes past her, a streak of light there in the breeze. 

The battle begins. 

There is exhilaration in a battle without mortal stakes- something she rarely gets outside the training maneuvers the Avengers run. Something just for fun. It’s joyous to spin with her shield, blocking stone sword after stone sword, paint running rivulets of blue down her shield and gold streaking every warrior she passes. She doesn’t have to watch out for Thor here. He’s in his element, his laughter booming like thunderclaps in her ears. The crowd reacts appropriately to his boastful, showy tricks, Volstagg’s heavy presence. To Fandral’s daring, to Hogun’s silent menace. It brings red to her cheeks to hear them shout her name when she takes out three men in a single sweeping move. 

When there is but one single Asgardian standing with blue on his sword, facing the four of them down, the men step back and let her have her right as she must- to prove she herself is worthy of standing at Thor’s side in battle. He moves there with his mask, a growl coming from beneath it, the sword sweeping towards her without warning. It’s a work of seconds to see it, clanging across her shield like a gong, the sound silencing the crowd. The warrior laughs in her face, blue paint dripping down between them onto the field. And she laughs right back, foisting her shield on him until his sword is nearly in his own face. It’s easy now to sweep her own sword towards his abdomen, only getting blocked at the last second. They clash back and forth like this, a dance she must perform for Thor, and she can feel his pride beaming at her behind her back. 

There are only two, maybe three minutes of the sparring before she finds the performance has grown tiring. Boring, perhaps, is the better word. It’s not hard to find where the warrior will turn, enough so that she can trip him onto his back and rest a heel on his chest, her sword tapping him gently on the smooth surface of the mask. The golden paint leaves a splotch on the very tip of the nose, and she throws her head back, laughs out the adrenaline of being the last one standing in any fight. Thor is the first one to break the silence after her laugh echoes between the crowd and their triumphant group, his own chuckle cleaving the tension like a lightning bolt. 

When she finally looks at the crowd, applauding them furiously, her fighting companions joyous behind her, green eyes are watching her with calculating delight. She feels trapped beneath them, caught in the sticky trap of his slowly building smile, and Loki nods his head at her before winking and disappearing with a turn of his cloak. It takes Thor clapping his hand on her shoulder in glee to break the spell, and she feels a little cold inside when she looks up at his vast grin. Stephanie wonders if Loki will do nothing but watch her all week- and wonders whether or not it’s a good thing that she wishes he might do more than just watch. 

But there is celebration to be had at the triumph of a second day, so she buries the thought beneath good wine and good company, for now.

* * *

 

The third day is welcome respite for her. Today, Jane’s house must step forward in her favor, and Stephanie always loves to see what Jane can come up with. She doesn’t always understand the science of it- rarely, in fact, does she find it easy to comprehend. But it’s beautiful in an alien way, that same fission of excitement she used to get hearing Howard speak of his latest, grandest plans. Jane has an eye for beauty not unlike the art Stephanie enjoys in her creations. And here is the greatest testament to her creativity, a marvel of engineering she and the members of her temporary house have brought to Asgard to present for their test of ingenuity. She doesn’t have to be present for the actual ceremony, so Stephanie begs off of watching Jane perform her test as the rest of the Warriors Three do. 

“It’s better I stay out of the way,” Stephanie tells Thor, punching his shoulder gently and grinning at him. “I know how you get when Jane talks science.” He pretends to ponder her words before grinning back, shoving her shoulder companionably back. 

“It’s true that there best not be anyone in the way of the most direct path back to my chambers once the test is complete,” Thor agrees. 

Instead, Stephanie finds her way out to the edge of the city, wandering the stone paths between citizens who give her a vast berth. Unlike in New York, where people mostly treat her like anyone else aside from the occasional overexcitable tourist, the Asgardians seem to deem her someone worthy of a healthy personal bubble and some vast well of respect. The architecture here is fascinating, arches of gold and stone that seem to hold themselves nearly unsupported. Everyone sweeps about in clothing grander than anything she’d expect on the average citizen. There are marketplaces with bickering old women, fruits she’d like to try but doesn’t want to chance without Thor there to translate. Old men sit in elaborate rocking chairs, smoking pipes full of something that smells like ginger and campfires in cold woods. There are small golden children dancing in the streets with each other, playing tag and getting muddy, but they speak in languages Stephanie can’t understand- too young yet to have the Allspeak. 

It’s like the first time Stephanie was in Paris, but a million times more complicated and confusing. Paris had been wartime, with luxuries dulled down and the cold of the battlefront still resting in her bones. There are no hints of ration or fear in this city, with their golden prince returned to wed his princess and joy running infectiously through the streets like a river flood. 

When she finally reaches the edge of the city, there is a forest waiting for her as the cobblestones peter off into a dirt trail. Stephanie has managed to convince the royal dressmaker that she doesn’t need a dress for anything but the formal ceremonies, and since she’s not participating in any today, she’s escaped in a pair of jeans and an old flannel she stole off Bucky. It’s far easier to enter the towering trees without a skirt tugging at the tinder and brush on the ground. Here the grass grows green even under the shade of vast evergreens, reminiscent of the ancient redwoods she’d seen out in California with Tony and Rhodey last summer. It’s quiet out here in a way she relishes after the roaring din of the celebrating palace. Bucky could sink into noise in a way she never had been able to, smirking about the rooms and finding himself comfortable within the warrior’s den where she’d left him to drink mead and regale the Warriors Three with tales of Stephanie-and-Bucky back in the war. 

There are no birdsongs here, no crackling twigs, a nearly eerie silence Stephanie can appreciate. For a while, she gathers broken branches up, rote habit from camping out in the woods of Europe. The farther she goes from the city, the more the shadows envelop her. She’s got a good armful of supple wood by the time he finds her, sitting at the foot of a tree and bending them together around the rim of her shield. She used to do this, braiding baskets like she might have hair back when she’d worn it long in the Brooklyn heat. Sometimes Bucky would wear them on his head, making them all laugh helplessly into their fists as he pretended to be her, little leaf wings sticking out from the sides of his basket helmet. 

“Watcher,” she calls him, trepidation souring her stomach. Out here, she feels calmer under his gaze, but there’s still an element of the unknown in their interaction. There are no whispering mouths nor gossiping eyes, but there  _ is _ his magic she doesn’t understand, and a mercy she cannot count on. He hums noncommittally, bending himself down beside her like he is a branch she might braid. Those green eyes are two sage-grey pools, still water deep in the woods where creatures with sharp teeth lurk. “You followed me here from the city?” 

“I was out here already when I heard you crashing through the underbrush,” Loki says airily, inspecting his fingernails with all the studied elegance of an aloof prince. It’s her turn to hum back at him, deftly whipping branches about each other as they form themselves into the smooth arch she’s looking for. Until her shield looks more like the gathering basket of an old woman than a weapon. It’ s probably a lie- she’s almost certain he followed her out here, silent feet through silent trees. Then again, the Liesmith could often craft his greatest deceptions from the smallest grain of truth. Perhaps he had simply found her out here, drawn by the distraction of her footfalls or her foraging for suitable twigs. She’d rather not think on what, then, he might have been doing here among the forest shadows before she came along, though. 

“Of course,” Stephanie says, not bothering to face him. “No need to follow a bumbling earthling like me.” He looks pleased at her cool sarcasm when she glances at him out of the corner of her eye. 

“You’re far more graceful than many an earthling,” Loki says after a moment of watching her intently, his hand resting palm down on the ground between them. 

“Was that a compliment I detected?” Stephanie finished the last knot of her basket, flipping her shield and shaking it gently so the rudimentary weave could drop down and settle between her crossed legs. “How inspiring.” He actually laughs at that, surprising and bold, a sound of genuine amusement. She thinks Loki’s smile is something far handsomer than she could have predicted, and unnervingly so. 

“A surprisingly salted tongue for a woman of your standing,” he says, pulling his hand up from the ground and leaving behind a single narcissus, waving slightly in the gentle breeze. Elegant fingers pluck it in swift motion, and Loki places it in the center of her basket, leaning close enough that she can smell the indefinable electric spice of his magic. 

“Fuck you,” Stephanie remarks without any particular anger, an eyebrow quirking up as she finally looks him in the eyes- eyes much closer than she’d thought they were. “I’m no gentlewoman, not by far, and I believe you know that.” Loki makes a small sound of surprise, his own eyebrows raising. “You’d do well not to pigeonhole me,” she says, slinging her shield back into its pack and tethering the basket to it, dusting her knees off before rising to her feet. The flower flutters to the ground- she doesn’t bother picking it up. Would rather not touch the magic, this far away from people she might consider solid allies. 

He follows slightly behind her as she meanders slowly down the path back towards the city, sharp eyes boring holes into the back of her skull.  _ Like a puppy following a butterfly _ , she thinks wryly.  _ Or a cat following a bird through the brush, caught up in curiosity. _ She’d assumed that Loki would be one to prowl silently through the forest, like the predator he tries to appear as. But the truth is more surprising- he hums softly to himself with every step on the rough path, reaching long fingers out to pluck flowers from the vines in the trees, or bending to pick a berry and pop it in his mouth, the juices staining his lips. Stephanie is rarely so at ease that she’ll willingly make noise walking through a forest; too many years battling in them has made her wary of every tree thick enough to hide an adversary. 

“You don’t like the forest,” he observes, after maybe ten minutes have passed. “It makes you nervous.” 

“I don’t,” she agrees, shifting her shoulders a little, rolling them back and twisting her neck back to look at him. He’s taken to walking with his hands behind his back, looking for all the world like they’re on a companionable stroll along the riviera or something. She’s certain there will be more flowers woven into her basket, when she eventually unhooks it from her back and takes a closer look. Preferably locked in her stone chambers in the palace. 

“You’ve fought many a battle in the forests,” Loki says, his voice closer than she’d prefer it to be. “ _ Lost _ many a battle in the forests.”  It takes several deep breaths before she can reply. 

“Didn’t you hear?” Stephanie says lightly, her fingers unclenching one by one through sheer force of will. “We won that war.” 

“ _ Winners _ in  _ war _ ,” Loki hums to himself, laughing like little silver fish leaping from a mercurial stream. It burbles and trickles down her spine. “What an interesting  _ idea _ .” It’s in her discomfort at the way he’s toying with her, disturbingly reminiscent of a jaguar batting at its prey, that she finally notices the most unsettling fact about their walk: they don’t seem to have gotten any closer to the city. She could see the golden spires off in the faint distance when they began walking, but their glint is no larger than it had been twenty minutes ago. 

Loki has the audacity to look surprised when she spins to face him, eyes a cobalt steel, jaw a stolid clench of frustration. 

“Don’t play your tricks on me, Silvertongue,” she grits, not bothering to analyze her own words. (Why, she will wonder later, did she call him Silvertongue? A name pulled out from the pages of a tattered old book she’d once found on Erik Selvig’s bench in the laboratories- the oldest name she could find for the Liesmith. It had fallen from her own tongue with the familiar weight of a pet name, and she could recall the shock flitting through his jade green eyes when it had left her mouth. Stephanie gets the feeling that it’s been many years since anyone called him Silvertongue, and many more since anyone meant it as an endearment.)  To his credit, he doesn’t pretend innocence, nor mock her with another trick. 

“Is it truly such a crime to wish to spend more time in the pleasure of your company, Stephanie?” He asks her softly, dangerously, fingers weaving silver lines in thin air as he taps a rhythm out. 

“Perhaps you weren’t aware,” she says, stepping back as the smell of magic in the air grows strong, “but I prefer to be asked for my company, not tricked into giving it.” His nod is slight, but she knows he understands. At the very least, the city is much closer when she turns her back on him again, and she’s confident it won’t take any longer than it had the first time to return to it. When they reach the gates of the city, where she somehow knows in the pit of her stomach that he will disappear from her side, she turns to him once more. 

“Don’t do that again,” she says, low and serious, leaning closer to him than he seems to expect. “Or you will regret it.” It’s not her favorite thing, to threaten, but the stern Captain America eyes and the commanding battlefield tone have served her well in the path with over-reaching men. 

His smile is more a smirk, less an assent, but she gets the feeling her words will be considered as he turns without so much as a goodbye and disappears around the edge of the city gate. When she follows him, she finds that the Liesmith is nowhere to be seen. Nothing more than what she might have expected, Stephanie supposes, setting off up the hills towards the pub she knows she left Bucky and the Warriors Three in. If she’s lucky, Sif will already have cut them off. If she’s unlucky (and she often is), she’ll get her daily workout in lugging Bucky’s giggling form up to their beds in the palace. 

It takes her three tries to find the pub, and Stephanie refuses to think it’s because of the silver-tinged hum that won’t leave her ears.

* * *

 

“Is it just me, or is this like the way better version of that easter egg maze we did last year with the President?” Bucky murmurs in her ear, nudging her with his metal arm and twining his fingers with hers as they watch Odin give out the directions of today’s festivities. A vast hedge labyrinth sprawls out before them, seemingly infinite towards the horizon, and she’s briefly reminded of that Harry Potter movie Darcy had insisted was a mandatory part of cultural assimilation. 

“Three chests,” Odin is saying, his hands waving imperiously once more. “Each holds an invaluable object for your future as partners.” 

“Condoms?” Bucky guesses, just a hair too loud for Stephanie’s comfort, stifling a giggle in her hair. Sif looks at them, clearly trying her best to seem chastising, but when Bucky meets her gaze she has to stifle a laugh as well. For a moment, under the weight of the moment, it’s almost like being back in the mass of her adolescence- Bucky cracking jokes next to her while she tries her best not to disrupt the service with laughter. Steeling her face into a stern mask and raising herself above the childish comedy. It never worked back then, and it doesn’t work particularly well now, but Bucky’s inimitable luck means that Odin has finished talking before she can really mess things up with an unstifled guffaw. Thor has the balls to look back at them like a disapproving teacher for a moment before his own mouth quirks up in a smile. 

For this test, they’ll have three hours in the maze to find the chests. If they do, Thor and Jane can count them as wedding presents. If they don’t- well. Odin doesn’t really dwell on that, besides the unsettling glint of hope in his eyes. It’s a test which seems far easier than many the Avengers have faced together; like a child’s game of scavenger hunt, or hide and seek. It’s only that Stephanie has no clue what Odin might deem helpful for a wedding. Or what the chests look like, or whether there are creatures only read about in dusty old Icelandic books lurking through the shadows of the maze. So teams seem the wisest choice when entering the great hedge maze to the cheers of the court that stands outside the entrance, drinking citrus-smelling meads and eating summer berries from vast golden tureens. As Stephanie and Bucky pass Frigga on their way into the unknown, the woman rests her hand briefly on Stephanie’s shoulder and winks conspiratorially. 

“I hear you’re good at finding things, dear Captain,” she says, and smiles gently. Stephanie jumps a little at the shock that passes between her shoulder and Frigga’s hand, but then Bucky is inclining his head at Frigga and tugging her into the green. 

It’s lucky that someone is leading her through, that Bucky is grasping her wrist like he used to- dragging her through the streets of New York with a starry-eyed look and big dreams tumbling from his open mouth. Because whatever Frigga had done, whatever spark she had passed, seems to have nearly blinded Stephanie temporarily. It’s almost as though she’s playing Superman, x-ray vision and all. She can see three distinct shapes through the hedges, all of them glowing a faint turquoise. In a blink, it’s fading away. Not before she can memorize the directions, though, so she pulls Bucky to a stop and shakes his arm, pulling him down to her mouth. 

“There’s one at the nine, one at the three, one at the seven,” she says, lips brushing against his ear. He looks at her funny, the way he would have when they were out in the field and she just  _ knew _ where a sniper was camping out, could taste it on the wind. But he’d long since stopped questioning Stephanie for the things she simply knew without knowledge, and nods. 

“I’ll take seven,” he says, all business in his tone, before he grins at her, all boy back on the playground, and lopes over to grab Jane and Darcy. He ushers them towards the channel of hedges that leads in the correct direction, and then- then they disappear, swallowed by the leaves. It doesn’t surprise her that he takes the least skilled members of their groups, nor should it. After all, Bucky had always been the one picking the littlest children for his baseball teams, or tucking them up onto his shoulders at a parade. Thor and Tony and the Warriors three are headed off in the direction of the glow at nine o’clock, the rest of the people trailing in pairs into the green. Hopefully, with Bucky’s help, at least two of the chests are in capable hands. And with Bucky by their side, Jane and Darcy might gain a nice victory, when they too get to present Thor with an Asgard-approved accomplishment. 

Stephanie, however, ends up standing in the little clearing at the beginning of the maze after everyone else has headed in different directions. No one seems to be heading towards the chest at three o’clock, so with a determined pace and the last of Frigga’s orange blossom and honey magic seeping from her eyes, she starts off toward it. There isn’t much in the way of magic to begin with, just some flowers blooming erratically from the hedges and seeming to almost reach towards her as she passes. But as she walks further, it becomes clear the hedges are moving when she’s not looking. The faint creaking, the whistling of the wind- she can’t hear the crowd, nor the others in the maze. 

“This really is like Harry Potter,” she mutters under her breath, considering whether or not the hedge might hold her weight if she were to vault over it. It seems unlikely. The wind whispers in her ear as she keeps going, a tongue she cannot speak. The deeper into the maze she goes, the more flowers bloom on the hedges, until all she can smell is their cloying sweetness and the pollen is clogging her nose. So far, no creatures have leapt out at her, but that doesn’t stop her from being suspicious turning every corner. After five minutes or so of petals falling in her hair, wind talking at her back, she hears it- the burble of a fountain, light and airy and gentle. The sound is pleasant, like the one in the atrium of Stark tower. She heads towards it- it’s in the right direction to be near the chest, which she assumes she’ll reach relatively soon, although the changing of the hedges might hinder that. 

And it is sort of a fountain. More of a pond, rippling gently out from the tiny waterfall that spills out of an overturned golden urn. There are little fish swimming beneath the crystal clear surface, purple grass growing around the edges. What look like hyacinth and coral colored water lilies with scarlet stamens wave softly back and forth, riding the little waves of the ripples. There isn’t a chest in sight, but somehow Stephanie knows that it’s close. It’s like the touch of Frigga’s hand on her shoulder all over again, something sparking in her ribcage, whispering in her ear. _ It’s here, it’s here, it’s here _ . 

She walks closer to the pond, carefully stepping around the poppies blooming in the grass and bending down on one knee to get a closer look at the fish. They’re gold and silver and copper, darting back and forth so quick she’s not sure a non-enhanced human could see them. Like the little betta fish Stephanie sees in the pet shops on Earth, their tails flow elegantly behind them, evening gowns for an underwater ball. When she dips her hand to the surface, touching the surprisingly warm water with the pad of one finger, they swim up to her and nibble at her fingertip like it could be food. Their eyes are luminous, opal colored, without pupils. It should be creepy, but Stephanie finds herself endeared. (Perhaps it says something about her that things ( _ people _ ) she should find creepy instead often garner her fondness.) 

The quiet around them is stifling, broken only by the sounds of the water, but it’s almost something she can sink into. Like the world has stopped around her, settled her in a glass bubble, set apart from time. She wonders, briefly, how Bucky and Jane and Darcy are faring- whether Darcy has tried to stomp on Bucky’s toe yet for one of his ill-timed jokes, whether Jane is marching on ahead of those two leading the way like she sometimes does when she gets hyped up on science. Thor and Tony must surely be close to finding the chest, with their overexcitable lust for adventure, for victory. And all she has found is a pond, with gentle little fish and sweet smelling lilies. 

It’s not so bad, though, to cross her legs and settle down, flicking petals off poppies to the fish and watching them bat the petals across the pond with little mouths curiously nibbling. She used to wish she had a pet, or a garden, or anything like this at all- something more than a public park, or a school playground. Something calm and quiet that was hers, unlike anything she or Bucky could ever find in the tenements. Her reflection is distorted in the water of the pond, watching clouds scud in an upside down mirror, when she finally catches on to the reason why her shoulder has been tingling, telling her  _ it’s here, it’s here, it’s here.  _

There’s a faint glint of turquoise at the bottom of the pond, hidden underneath the distortion of the water from the burbling stream that flows off the urn, obscured by bubbles and quick swimming fish. When she focuses harder, dragging her hand through the water in order to clear up the ripples and send them in another direction, she can see it better. Gold rope encircles the turquoise chest, heavy marbled stone sitting dull at the bottom, resting in dark purple watergrass. The shadows make it almost impossible to see (for anyone who’s not a super soldier.) She isn’t exactly wearing something ideal for swimming, but Stephanie has certainly swum in worse. In her uniform, in some godawful swimming costume Bucky’s mom had sewn her- in the clothes she’d undergone Erskine’s procedure in, running after the Hydra spy on bare feet through the streets of her city that looked so familiar but so different on sharper, quicker eyes. All things considered, the flowing crimson dress she’d been given by Thor for the day’s ceremony isn’t the hardest thing to shuck off, letting it slip to the ground as she shook out her hair and dipped one foot carefully in the pond. The fish darted away, glowing eyes flitting through the water like stars trapped in a glass. With a deep breath- 

She dives. 

The water is unlike anything she’s ever felt, surrounding her in a warm rush as she breaks the surface. She can feel the fish all around her, but when she opens her eyes it’s startling how different they look her under the water. Gold becomes green; copper becomes purple; silver becomes a tarnished orange. The once-purple grass is a fiery scarlet as she sweeps her hand through it, powerful strokes propelling her closer and closer to the chest. Underwater, the chest is less gold and turquoise and more red and silver. Every bubble that escapes her mouth is like smoke, dissipating up towards the other world she’d left behind. 

The chest is heavy, slippery, as she gets her hands around it, but Stephanie manages to find a hold on the red rope, wrapping fingers through until she can tug it up from the slowly waving grass. Like pulling Bucky up from the shadows of a river (like Bucky pulling her), like dragging someone out of the depths of hell, she kicks upwards, tugging the reluctant chest towards the surface. Her first breath feels like fire in her lungs, little fish around her feet, and her hair is stuck to her eyes when she pushes the chest onto shore. It’s easy to flop down on the poppies and the grass once the chest is unhooked from her stiff hands. For a moment, all she can see is golden locks, sopping wet and warm in the beaming sun. A deep breath, another,  _ another _ . And that’s when she realizes that the silence, the bubbled molasses of time, is gone- a silver bell hum coming from the space beside her. That electrical ozone taste of magic, a ticking clock, a tapping finger. 

With one hand, she sweeps the hair from her face, blinking upwards towards the man lazing next to her like a lion in the afternoon heat of the Sahara. His smile is more predatory than mirthful, eyes flicking slowly across the wet shift sticking to her skin. It’s no less revealing than the skintight suits she fights in, but something about his eyes feels like he sees right through her, right down to her bones. It’s all she can do to act like he hadn’t startled her, adopting the calm he’s pushing out, those obnoxious waves of nonchalance. 

“Come along for the treasure hunt, Loki?” Stephanie asks after a minute, sitting up and wringing the ends of her hair out. She’s trying for that studied unconcern, though she’s not entirely sure she pulls it off. 

“I saw Frigga’s sei∂r, before the hunt,” he replies, a not-answer to her not-quite-a-question. “Giving you the Sight. She always did like to break the rules for precious Thor.” 

“It seems she also likes to break the rules for you,” Stephanie says. This battle, between sons for a mother who loves them both more than they can know- it’s unfamiliar to her. Her own mother had never made her love for her daughter a secret, and Stephanie had never failed to see it. Bucky’s mother had also had warm arms and a warm heart for all her children, regardless of whether she’d actually birthed them or not. It seems so clear to her that Frigga loves her sons, though in different ways. Different hearts for different boys, lost among the trees looking for a path back to the childhood they had long left behind. Thor needs his mother’s love and approval like a golden son returning with his trophies, bringing home all he has won from the world to make his mother proud. He respects her words, her counsel, her strength. 

Loki seems to need his mother’s love like a sailor adrift on the sea, waiting for the lighthouse to set a beam through the fog. He’s unsettled, in many ways, by the fact that he has no blood claim on her- not like Thor. And he loves far more quietly, like snakes in the tall grass, squeezing the life from the things he can’t let go. Like the Midas Touch, all he desires turns to gold, leaving his hands for Thor’s domain; and never do they seem to turn silver. From what Thor has told Stephanie, and what she’s seen herself, Loki’s bitterness towards his brother is tinged his jealousy over the parts of Frigga’s motherly love he cannot hold, and the parts of the world which he never wanted but was faulted for not fighting towards. 

“Ah, rules.” Loki says, after a brief pause. “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Thor has never had them to be broken in the first place.” 

“She taught you magic,” Stephanie says, the water dripping down her neck as she turns towards Loki, gripping the grass beneath her with hands that ache to leap away from this unknown. He is a handsome man, it’s plain to see, but as much as that might have set her at ease when she met, say, Rhodey, it’s simply unsettling for the face of a man who once tried to open the door to hell in her hometown. 

He’s not that man, though- she thinks. Smaller, wearier. Perhaps wiser. 

Still  _ dangerous _ .

“The sei∂r,” Loki acknowledges. “Yes. Yes, I have always had her tricks,” he says, like a script with dog-eared pages. Words pored over again and again. “But Thor, Thor has always had her trust.” 

“I hope you’re not asking me to treat you like Frigga did just because I don’t trust you but I do trust Thor,” she says wryly. “Because I’m not qualified to deal with that level of fucked up.” He actually laughs, looking a little startled into it, green eyes crinkling up with amusement. 

“Trust,” he muses, leaning his head back and closing his eyes, soaking in the sun. “I wouldn’t expect that of you, darling Captain. Not after what I’ve done. Not after what you’ve seen.” 

“So, what,” she says, shaking out the hem of her shift a little and leaning over to grab the dress from where she’d crumpled it on the ground before diving into the pond. “You just followed me out in the woods and here in the maze to...? Make sure I wouldn’t trust you? Show off your magic? You just like sitting beside ponds and waiting for swimmers to notice you?” Loki looks a little surprised, one eyebrow twitching just the slightest bit. He waits for her to pull the dress back on, settling smoothly over her, previously flowing fabric sticking a little to the damp shift beneath. 

“The hunt is mine to participate in,” he says, hands idly plucking at the purple grass around the pond. “As a part of what-  _ who _ Thor claims as his house, whether I want to be or not.” 

“Sure,” she snorts. “That’s why you waited until I dove into the pond to teleport yourself out of the shadows. A totally normal and not-creepy thing to do.” 

“You underestimate the maze,” Loki leers, leaning back and grinning through sharp teeth. “You were under for far longer than the flash of time it would have taken for me to  _ creep _ , as you so eloquently put it. The pond is not just a pond, darling Captain,” and he sweeps a hand up towards the sky, one long finger pointing towards the sun. “An hour of time up here,” and he gestures with the other towards the water. “Seconds below the surface.” 

“You’re-” she stops, peering suspiciously at his face. He smirks even wider. 

“A liar?” Loki says, voice light and mocking. 

But he isn’t, this time he isn’t- and from looking at the sun, she can see that it appears to have moved a great deal since she settled down at the side of the pond. 

“Jesus,” she swears, slinging her still dripping hair over her shoulder and levering herself up with a hand on the grass. “We still have to make it back to the beginning for the chest to count.” Loki looks like for all the world he’d rather do anything but do that, but he stands anyway. She doesn’t bother to see if he’s following her as she starts back towards the place where she thinks she first began. 

It seems obvious, somehow, that he will.

* * *

 

There’s something that’s been nagging at Thor’s mind, these past few days. A shadow in the corner of his vision, lurking peripheral and tugging about the edges of his thoughts. It’s only as he sees Stephanie emerge from the hedges, a flower stuck in her wildly curling hair and a chest held triumphantly in her arms, Loki trailing behind her with a studied look of boredom on his face, that he realizes what it is. There is a glint in his brother’s eyes (his brother who is not a brother, who refuses to be a brother-) that feels like a punch to the gut. A sparkle that transports Thor back, back to their youth. When, long ago, there was another fair woman who Loki had followed through the fields with a longing in his heart. 

Lady Sigyn had golden hair like spun sun-bleached wheat, eyes that glittered like the promise of an open sea at daybreak. She was brilliant, a star around which Loki could not help but orbit, and best of all she had always laughed at his tricks, never quick to anger when one went awry. She was just slightly younger than he and Loki, a child of the court who they’d come upon one day in their youth as Loki tried to convince Thor to go swimming in one of the grand fountains in Frigga’s gardens. It took only moments for Loki to be smitten with her, her delicate giggle like golden bells on the breeze as he produced some fanciful thing from his sleeve and bowed low enough his nose nearly touched the ground. 

There were glorious days, hundreds of years where Thor could remember the smile on Loki’s face. A smile he knew had belonged solely to Sigyn. At a time, he had thought maybe they would marry. They were inseparable, Loki running off to find her when he’d pulled a prank too far, to hide behind her goodnatured laughter, Sigyn appearing with a new book or some green thing she’d found out in the woods she thought Loki might like. And Sigyn’s knowledge of sei∂r was improbably huge, enough so that she could surpass Loki in ways that made the young aesir starry eyed with awe. When Sigyn would leave, to visit her father out in the mountains around the city, or she was busy with something, Thor would find Loki sick with longing out on the balconies of their mother’s chambers. Silent and sullen,  with a golden ribbon in his hands, Loki would rest his head on the bunched hems of Frigga’s dresses where she sat weaving, a love-fevered teenager waiting for his sun to rise once more. 

But the years had been cruel to Loki in ways that Thor had not, at the time, realized. One day, the smile that belonged to Sigyn was gone, and Thor wouldn’t see it again for a millennia. As inseparable as Sigyn and Loki had been, life had a way of cutting what would not be cut. It was with the impartial harshness no apologies could condole that the sword of the Norns came between them, severing the red ribbon with a summons for Sigyn from the highest of the Vanir, those golden beings of light that lived among the clouds. Her talent for sei∂r had not gone unnoticed among the realms. There was a snake, it was said, the Jormungandr that held the realms together with its crushing strength. It made up the roots and the branches of the Yggdrasil, the great tree of realms. And this snake needed a keeper, someone to watch over it and keep it company with sei∂r and the apples of Idunn’s garden. It held six stones, six of the forces that had ruled the ether of the universe before the universe was even born. 

On a stormy winter day, when he and Loki were but barely men, Loki had watched Sigyn’s golden hair and golden love ride from the gates of the city, never looking back at him for fear she might turn round and leave the Jormungandr to rot in the tree with his stones and the old guard of the Vanir. There were months where Thor did not see Loki at all, after that, but he had almost been too busy sparring and laughing and fighting for the glory of his father’s approval that he hadn’t noticed the absence of Loki’s shadow.  When Loki had finally returned, eyes dark with weeks of the wine of Alfheim and cheeks sunken in with grief, the Sigyn-smile was gone, and the mask of a laugh was back. That summer, they ate their first of Idunn’s apples, and Loki swore that love was for fools who could afford such a frivolous weakness. 

Thor hadn’t seen his brother’s eyes look so bright as when they followed Stephanie’s triumphance in the sunshine, muscles working under smooth skin as she set the heavy chest down at Thor’s feet and bowed her head slightly. Loki was just a few feet behind her, inclining his own head just a little as his mouth quirked a little smile for Thor. Their eyes met, green and blue and more years than any human could count between them. 

And he knew, then, with certainty, what his heart had understood before his brain had.

* * *

 

One of the chests, the one Tony and Thor had found, holds in it two cloaks. One is the deepest blood red, fabric sliding through Jane’s fingers like a handful of sand. When Thor bends (quite far) to let her clasp it around his shoulders, he looks at her like she’s hung the moon in the sky right in front of his eyes. The other cloak is a brilliant gold, seemingly spun from the metal itself. Thor clasps it around Jane with the reverence of a worshipper at the feet of his goddess, one finger gently trailing the end of a strand of her hair as he pulls away. 

The chest Bucky, Jane, and Darcy had found holds two crowns. The larger one, clearly for Thor, has the most brilliantly red rubies Stephanie has ever seen. It is not gracefully filigreed, nor carefully worked. Instead, the hammered metal gleams in such a manner that it appears to shimmer, mirage like, on his head, as Jane once again requests that he bend down so she can place it carefully on his sandy blonde head. Jane’s crown, though, has the most beautiful sapphires imaginable. They shine blue, nearly electric, as Thor slowly rests it on the elegant braids of Jane’s hair, bending to kiss her forehead. This time, it’s Jane who looks starstruck. 

The last chest sits damply in the grass, smaller than the others and reeking of suspense. It’s not immediately apparent, when Jane and Thor open it together, one hand on either side of the lid, what’s within. At first glance, it appears to be a single golden apple, sitting upon a silken white cushion. There’s a sinking feeling in Stephanie’s chest at that- she’d dived to the bottom of the pond, gone through the maze alone, and for what? A fruit? It’s that old feeling of being the bottle blond- the bottle superhero. Beautiful cloaks and crowns from the others, but her chest, of course, contains someone’s fancy box lunch. But then she hears Loki breathe out a single word beside her, and the dusty tomes from Erik’s office spring to mind. 

“Idunn,” Loki says, like the breath has been squeezed from his lungs. Suddenly, the knowing smile on Frigga’s face makes sense. The gifts had not all been from Odin- certainly, the ostentatious cloaks and the crowns were his work. The gift of a monarch to his son, to make sure his appearance was in keeping with his status. But the apple, now, that’s something Thor had once said would never be willingly given by Odin’s hand. A point of contention between the son and his father, the unwillingness to allow Thor even one day more with his love than her mortal lifespan might permit. A single golden apple, worth a decade or more to an earthly woman. 

“Mother,” Thor says breathlessly, turning to face Frigga where she stands, her smile gentle and so bright that it’s nearly difficult to look at. Odin’s face is stormy clouds, a frown threatening to break out into anger, but Frigga simply steps forward, reaches out her arms and lets Thor envelop her in an embrace. When Thor finally lets go, she turns to Jane and embraces her as well, letting the smaller woman bury her face in Frigga’s sage green sleeve and whisper thanks, over and over again. 

“There is nothing a mother would not do to ensure her son’s happiness in love,” Frigga says quietly, so softly that even Stephanie can hardly hear her from where they stand. She knows that only she and Loki can catch it, this far away. Perhaps this is better- it is a message Loki could stand to hear and a message she would never repeat. It’s somehow satisfying to watch Odin turn in a swirl of regal cloak, staff stomping as he walks away from them. Watching Thor and Jane kiss in the waving grass, with their cloaks in the breeze and their crowns shining brightly, she feels that familiar clench in her heart. It’s as Bucky always says, and probably always will say. 

Stephanie has always been a sucker for love.

* * *

 

There’s something burning in the pit of Loki’s chest, something that knots him up inside like a poison. A desire that makes his fingers itch, when he watches Thor laugh uproariously with his teammates. He remembers the way the trees swayed in the breeze on midgard, the way the sky seemed so blue as to outstrip even Thor’s eyes. He remembers the way magic came easy to his fingertips, thrumming through his veins in the warmth of their solar system’s sun. The past hadn’t mattered so much, down on midgard, though he was there to right wrongs he had committed while he was half mad on starshine and not quite home in his heart yet. 

Here, he never seems to make progress. The anger festers in his ribs, the resentment stabbing when he tries to sleep, or eat, or breathe. Here, he is chained by the irons of his station, by the weight of his pseudo-father’s disapproval, by the visceral pain of his mother’s quiet grief. Watching as Stephanie reaches up to clap Thor on the shoulder, her hair drying in a golden halo around her head, he  _ aches _ . He burns for the way Tony admires Jane’s crown, for the way his Pepper touches Natasha’s arm companionably, He desires like a knife in his gut at the way the Soldier wraps an arm around the archer and laughs like the careless happiness of a summer breeze. 

Standing in the mid-afternoon light, all covetousness and realization, Loki knows what he must do.

* * *

 

It is during the ceremony of truth on the fifth day, when the palace is quietly awaiting Thor and Jane’s return from the temple of the Norns, that Frigga finds him in her solarium. 

“I have asked Thor for the papers,” Loki says, knowing she will understand. Frigga has always understood him, even when he was incomprehensible to everyone else, half mad on the light of the stars and Thanos’ touch in his mind. “If he spills the blood of his thumb upon him, as I know he will, it may be long before I see you again.” 

“Silvertongue,” Frigga says, disappointment weighing her tone like stones tied to fairies’ feet. “I spent years weaving with you, teaching you the sei∂r that was your birthright. And you always yearned to quit the stool when we were done, to follow Thor by sword and by blood. I thought, perhaps...” She sighs. “I thought you had grown from that, by now.” 

“It wounded him to see that I had no family claim,” Loki says, conversationally, as though he hadn’t heard her at all. “I could see the betrayal on his face. But I think I prefer that hurt, to be Loki of no claim, than to have any blood bound in a paper with Loki Odinson on it.” 

“You could stay by my side,” Frigga says, after a moment of pained silence. “Like the old days, when the Norns sang your lullabies, and we had no need of shields. It’s not too late to break the papers before Thor makes them permanent and binds you to his care. Perhaps your- perhaps Odin might even let me hold them. We could weave once more, Loki, like we did before you turned the sei∂r in ways I never taught you.” She swallows heavily, watching her child stare out the window with the thousand-yard eyes of a man scarred by war. “Before you turned the sei∂r and became the Liesmith.” 

“I have not lied to you,” he says softly, as he turns to go. “Not once since the battles ended.”

“Oh, Loki, my son, mine child most beloved,” Frigga says, looking more tired than he has ever seen her, even after great wars had come to bloody ends. “I know.” It does not change much, but it feels so significant, in that moment, that he cannot help but turn back to her. Her smile is light, as it always has been, the benediction he has always needed from her most of all. “Amends come slowly,” she reaches out, pressing her hand to the side of his jaw softly, her thumb stroking across one prominent cheekbone. “But they are borne most easily on the wings of truth, and I am proud that you can be the one to bear that burden.”

It’s so easy, then, to bow his head, and let himself breathe deeply of her approval until the sting in his eyes lessens and he can bear to meet her gracious eyes once more. 

“Know that,” she murmurs, bending his neck and reaching up to press a kiss to his forehead. “And know that I would be honored if you were to carry my name when there is a family name you carry once more.” Her smile turning rueful, she steps back, and Loki is adrift once more. “I would call you Friggason, Loki of-no-claim, and I would call you that with pride.” 

And yes, perhaps he is adrift, but now he knows where the beacon lies, and which direction he must go to find the shore.

* * *

 

Stephanie promises herself she will not cry there on the dais, watching Thor and Jane pledge their lives to one another with a golden rope and the universe in their eyes. Surreptitiously blinking the moisture in her eyes, she hands Thor the rings (Jane had insisted on this one small bit of midgard) and, ever so reverently, the two of them slide the tungsten bands into place. Everything smells of honeysuckle and gardenia, a rose-gold blur around the whole of them as the assembled crowd weeps and smiles and watches their prince triumphantly dip Jane back like an old Hollywood star, kissing her with all the exuberance of a man who knows his love is true. When the ceremony is over, Bucky is by her side in an instant, offering her his pocket square so she can dab away the tears, his own eyes a little suspiciously watery. 

“I need some mead,” he says decisively, linking his arm with hers and resting his cheek on the top of her overly-coiffed head for a brief second. She laughs, a little tear-salted, and nudges him back. 

“Happy that the alcohol up here actually does something for you, you lush?” She asks, her fingers grasping the brass arm guard that goes with Bucky’s Asgardian ceremonial wear. It’s been decades since the last time she got to call Bucky that, teasing him on the walk down to the bars or the swing clubs. 

“I’m choking on all the sentimentality around here, Rogers,” he drawls, grinning widely as he leads her through the throng of people making their way to the celebration hall. Now that the ceremony is over, and the clock is nearly about to strike midnight, the revelry can begin. The sound of the bells are louder than anything Stephanie has ever heard, ringing out over the crowd just as she and Bucky make it to the hall. When they finally die down, there is a thick quiet settling over the crowd. An anticipation. Watching, waiting, until Thor climbs to the raised table where he and Jane will receive their guests and eat their first meal together as husband and wife. As lord and lady. He raises a glass, as does Jane, and, in his most joyous, booming voice, he speaks. 

“Let us celebrate,” he says, a thunderclap cleaving the silence, “for the Norns are witness to the love of my life and there is revelry to be had!” He smiles at Jane, and she smiles back, turning and letting the other drink the goblet they each hold aloft. There is mischief like that which Stephanie has never seen in Jane’s eyes when she stands back, still holding her goblet aloft. Thor’s pride nearly suffocates the room when Jane tosses the goblet to the ground, a joyful laugh spilling from her chest. 

“Another!” Jane cries, and the entire room is treated to one more old movie kiss as the celebration finally erupts in full force.

* * *

 

She’s really not much of a dancer (all left feet, all bad luck, missing dates by decades) but up here in Asgard, that doesn’t seem to matter much. Bucky pulls her out in turns on the floor, reminiscent of the old days when he would twirl her with glee until her old patched nylons were showing all the way up her leg. Tony dances with her, making quips about doing the Charleston in his now-recognizable attempts at camaraderie. Pepper asks her for a slow song, spending it on quiet remarks about all the beautiful art in the palace in a way that suggests no one else will talk about it, the tapestries and the stained glass. Clint is as terrible a dancer as Stephanie is, so much so that she asks whether his wife had repeatedly broken toes or just given up on him. He laughs at that, tells her that Natasha is always happy to take Laura on a turn or two around the floor if she’s got a real desire for some dancing. She gets a rather emotional dance with Thor, his hands huge on her arms and his smile blinding. When the song ends, he gently cups the side of her jaw and bends to kiss her forehead. 

“Sister,” he says softly, pulling back and touching his thumb briefly to the flutter of her happy pulse. She has to will herself not to cry then either. 

Darcy takes to teaching all the older members of the group some of the newer “hip” dances on the floor after more mead has been drunk than is left in the barrels. 

“We don’t call them  _ hip _ dances anymore,” she snarks at Bucky, hip cocked and eyebrow raised. “Unless you’re referring to how your hip will most certainly go out if you attempt them, old timer.” Ah, young love, Stephanie thinks, watching Bucky’s cheeks tint red and his smirk curl up a little more. She gives them a few months before Bucky either gets up the guts to make a move, or Darcy figures out her crush isn’t so one-sided. 

Natasha dances like she’s about to kill Stephanie, terrifyingly graceful and horribly efficient. There are no flourishes wasted on Natasha’s dancing, but it still manages to dazzle as though she’d gilded every step. Stephanie can’t keep up, not hardly. With Nat around her, it doesn’t seem to matter. No one’s noticing her, anyway. Fandral is a charming dancer, in a harmlessly flirtatious way. Hogun is a silent dancer, but he moves confidently, and it’s nice to rest her voice for a moment in his capable hands. Sif doesn’t want to dance, but instead leads Stephanie for a drink, handing her a goblet of mead before she wanders off to talk weaponry with Volstagg. 

It’s there that he appears at Stephanie’s side, his green eyes flickering warm silver and gold in the firelit hall. He moves like a shadow, slipping through spaces that should seem impossible. An enigma, seemingly dedicated to materialize every time she feels least prepared to deal with him and his infuriating mystery. What makes her so attractive to him, she doesn’t know, and after Thor had pulled her aside yesterday and informed her of Loki’s offer of penance on the Avengers’ roster, she feels as though she may never find out. The way his eyes linger on her no matter where she is in the room, the weight of them on her skin- it’s like being a puzzle he can’t solve. 

“Enjoying yourself, darling Captain?” He says smoothly, bending down to speak directly into her ear. She would shiver if she didn’t have so much pride, so much desire to not let him know how his voice sent shuddery little tingles down her spine. 

“This is a bigger party than I’ve ever been to,” she says, taking another sip of her mead, enjoying the delicate burn of the honeyed alcohol. “Certainly never got something like this on wartime rations.” Loki doesn’t seem satisfied with her answer, shifting like something is begging to leap off the tip of his tongue. 

“You don’t seem one for parties, Stephanie” he says after a moment of obvious deliberation, and she can’t stifle her laughter. It’s impossible to tell what he’s trying to provoke, but she knows in the core of her being that he’s trying to provoke  _ something _ . 

“Clumsier off the battlefield than on it,” she shrugs, watching as Bucky twirls Pepper like he used to in the old dimly lit clubs to the scratchy trumpets blaring. “Not particularly good at conversation without offending, always putting my foot in my mouth, and I’ve got a stomach like a horse. No one likes it when you eat all their birthday cake,” Stephanie laughs, setting her goblet down on the sturdy wooden table beside them. “I’m a terrible dancer, to boot.” 

“A  _ terrible _ dancer,” he says, like he simply can’t believe it. His eyebrows really are overly expressive, and his cheekbones, and- oh. Yes. The mead. She shakes her head, dampening the runaway thoughts in her brain. “Well, perhaps you just haven’t had a good enough partner.” 

“The right partner,” she says softly, before she can stop herself. Loki looks pleased, his hand reaching out for her in a graceful beckon, waiting for hers to join it. He looms over her, almost like he doesn’t mean to, eyes watching her so intently it’s almost a physical feeling. Stephanie thinks the air might actually crackle between them in that moment, stretching on between them before she sighs heavily and lets herself take his invitation. 

She knows the crowd is watching them closely, pretending disinterest while they track their movement across the dance floor like hawks. She can see Bucky, hovering around the edge of the throngs of gossipers, his eyes locked on her. Loki’s hands are warmer than she expected them to be, for a creature of ice, and they settle on her waist and twine around her hand with a finality, a sense of victory. He really- he really is quite handsome, with his dark features and the attractive cockiness of his smile. There’s something soft about the way he leads her around the floor, unexpectedly gentle as they turn, and turn, and turn. She thinks she saw a movie like this once, half asleep on the sofa during a team night at the tower. 

Something about a glass bubble and the world falling down- it seems right, in this moment, the two of them in finery far beyond their comfort, with the audience of a kingdom. She doesn’t feel unsettled, this close to him, or clumsy. Surprisingly, she begins to feel as though the world is simply falling down  _ around _ them, leaving nothing but green eyes and soft hands and the slightest tingle of magic on her tongue. This is what Bucky might call a  _ moment _ , the kind of thing he’d always chastised her for missing when they would walk home at three in the morning and Stephanie would lament the girls she’d left behind at the bar, or the boys who she hadn’t danced with. 

“You have no awareness, Stephie,” he’d said, slinging an arm around her shoulders and rubbing her hair into a mess, laughing at her disgruntled expression. “Not a single ounce of it in that big brain’ve yours. You just gotta go for it- you just gotta  _ kiss the girl _ .” 

In this molasses slow second, she thinks she finally understands what a moment is, the hairsbreadth of time where opportunity gleams before you. The music feels faded, muffled beyond them- she can’t tell if it’s her, or some kind of magical effect coming off him. A thousand eyes lift off her, nothing more than backdrop. It’s like all the romantic comedies she’d watched on Netflix, trying to catch up, trying to understand everything that had changed. The guy leans in, and everything stops. Loki’s eyes are so bright, his breath cool on her cheek as he bends his head, his hands tugging her infinitesimally closer. 

“Enjoying the party now, darling Captain?” He murmurs, smugness rich in his voice. This time, she doesn’t stifle her shiver, feels viscerally how much his cockiness grows from that simple reaction. 

“And here I thought,” she says steadily, tilting her head up to look him straight in the eye, “that you were the smart one, Silvertongue.” 

It is- it really is like being in a romantic comedy, the fire flaring in his gaze at her response, the laughter dancing along the lines of his face, the way he leans in even more. But, like all romantic comedies, the  _ moment _ comes with something far less enjoyable. The steely cold hand of an interloper closing around her shoulder, just as Loki’s cold breath brushes across her open lips, and Bucky Barnes purposefully pulling her away from a flirtation for the first time in her life. 

“You’re going to do something you regret, Stephie,” he whispers, barely audible over the music, and it’s like cold water all over her, like diving into the pond in the maze all over again. Loki’s hands have left her like a flash of lightning, standing suddenly three feet away when she turns back to him, to apologize maybe or- she doesn’t even know. 

“Ah,” Loki says, his voice artificially light as the music swells unbearably and then dips to a close. “It appears the song is over.” The band starts again, and she wants to step back to him, to push Bucky’s hand off her arm. It’s not a feeling she cares to analyze, the need to feel his hand on hers again, to ask for them to start again, the same way the band has. Her voice feels caught in her throat in a way it hasn’t in years, maybe since the day she saw Bucky again in the smoke of DC, his eyes a blank slate. 

“Thank you for the dance, Captain,” Loki says, bowing overly formally. 

And then he’s gone, slipping into the crowd again, leaving her with Bucky standing grimly at her shoulder.

* * *

 

“She reminds me much of Lady Sigyn,” Sif remarks quietly some time after the contentious dance, sitting beside Loki on the bench looking out over the festivities. He’d escaped here using rather more magic than he usually did, hiding himself out like he used to back when he was a shy child who didn’t want to speak with the court ladies. It’s not a surprise that Sif is the one to find him. She always did have a way of seeing through his masks, whether she liked what she found behind them or not. 

“Does she?” Loki responds blandly, his face blank. “I would not have drawn such a connection.” 

“You cannot fool me, Loki,” Sif says, after a moment. “There has always been a weakness in you for that of her kind.”

“Her kind?” he asks, dangerously soft and sharp. She sighs, before she laughs, and then she stands.

“Darkness wants for light, does it not? One cannot exist without the other.” Sif’s hand briefly brushes his shoulder, a symbol of camaraderie that may yet blossom again between them, the way it would have once in childhood. 

And she leaves him with his thoughts.


	2. The Binding of Loki Friggason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki joins the Avengers, Thor is always watching, Bucky is protective, Pietro and Wanda are unimpressed, Peter is mortified, Tony makes terrible decisions, everyone has nightmares, and Stephanie is, above all, very confused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am stunned and thrilled at the response to this fic, and I hope you all enjoy this chapter. Love you guys.

By the time Thor and Jane leave for their honeymoon, a stay in Alfheim where Jane will more than likely spend all her non-bedroom hours researching, Thor has cut his thumb on the edge of a silver blade and pressed it to Loki’s papers. Unofficially, he belongs to them. His blood as their blood, his sword as their sword- his insufferable sarcasm as their grating nerves. In Thor’s absence, just until he and Jane return, Stephanie holds the papers. She is, of the Avengers’ roster, the least likely to let her mistrust and paranoia overtake her. At least, that’s what Thor tells her, as he hands her the miniscule scroll in its small glass jar, hung on a chain meant to go around the holder’s neck. The glint in his eye speaks of something more than surface motivation, but there’s no time to interrogate him before Jane is calling, her arms full of wobbling scientific equipment. 

Sif is the one who Odin decrees will set the official terms of the agreement of penance Loki has made with the Avengers and their Midgard. She’s more impartial than Thor, though impartial is not a word Loki would ever use to describe Sif. It burns a little, the way it always has, to submit to her authority, as they sit in the law chambers and draw up the spellpapers for official royal record. Stephanie stands by the windows, watching palace guards perform training maneuvers out on the courtyard. She holds the papers in her hand- strong but little, compared to the hands Loki means the papers to belong to. 

“Loki,” Sif says, muttering as she scratches out names on the faintly glittering parchment, “of willing mind, his penance and sentence shall be in service of, not in service  _ to _ , majorly Thor Odinson of the Court of Asgard and minorly the Avengers of Midgard-” Her brow is furrowed like Loki remembers it being when they had once studied together as children. Here they are, a millennia later, in the same seats where they listened, starry eyed, to Frigga’s tales. Bones wearier, flesh scarred, hearts hardened. It is a pitiful mirror of the young pups they once were, eager for knowledge and battle. Reveling in the responsibilities they would bear, unaware of how heavy those chains would prove to be. It sours his tongue, a little bit, to see the way her eyes have faint wrinkles around the corners. Despite their relative immortality, the unkindness of war mars all countenances who weather its bloody embrace. 

When she has finished with it, cut her own thumb and placed it on the intricately drawn sei∂r seal of the agreement from the side of the court- she passes it to him. It’s strangely peaceful in his mind, sitting here, waiting to sign away the last of his sentence. It was never a sentence of time; nothing like a set amount of months that he could while away, or duties he could perform. No, this sentence will weigh on him for as long as it takes for the pain and the hurt and the bitterness inside to ease. All the more reason why he must get out of these stone chambers, these poisonous memories. The steel trap of nostalgia. 

All the more reason why a seedling needs sun to grow. 

The papers are beautiful in the way that Loki has always admired them for, utilitarian in word, but elegantly penned, beautiful inks and parchment colors. It seems, at first glance, to be everything he wants. But there is one thing, a needle in his flesh-

“Why do you not use my surname?” he asks her, his jaw clenched up tightly. Like a punch to the face, seeing Thor’s claim to the family he had never truly been a part of beside his own name abandoned, cut short. 

“Who would you claim?” Sif asks him slowly. “I won’t try to bind you to a family you don’t accept.” He thinks of a kiss on the forehead and a graceful smile, and eyes filled to the brim with love he could scarcely fathom, even now.

“I would have you call me Frigga-son,” he says after a tense moment, his jaw relaxing, and Sif simply nods. 

“Loki Friggason you shall be,” she says, something akin to joy skirting around the edge of her words. “And a Frigga-son you certainly are.” 

“Perhaps,” says Thor, later on when he has returned from Alfheim on his way back to Earth, when Sif tells him of the name they will use on Loki’s papers, “‘tis better that he and I do not share Odinson any longer.” His laugh is booming, and it echoes back through the memories he recalls. “Two Odin-sons were too much trouble for one realm to handle, once upon a time, and Midgard could hardly bear the burden.” 

Secretly, though, he is more proud of Loki than his jest might admit. For Loki is the brother strong enough to not only reject the father who had cast him aside as a casualty of war, but to accept back the love of a mother who had failed him. Who  _ he _ had failed. Thor has never been that brother, and he would never want to be. For all of Odin’s faults, he cannot seem to cast him away the same way Loki has. For all of Odin’s faults, Thor will still seek his approval in the way Loki learned only leads to failure and disappointment. And for all of Frigga’s benevolence, for all her love, he would never be able to represent her in good faith, though he knows she would be proud to have him do so. Loki has made his mistakes, but he is growing from them, and as he sheds his tortured skin this new name will do him good. 

And truthfully, he is glad that earth will not see them as brothers under these names. It may be that it is time for Loki to make his own family, one that will not hurt him. 

Thor can only hope he will be so lucky as to be called brother once more, this time by choice. 

\--

Loki says goodbye to Frigga not with words, but rather with gestures. The way he lingers by her side at the end of a meal, or carries her work from one side of her room to the other before she even rises. The way he preempts her need for tea at the end of a long afternoon, or flicks his fingers negligently to scatter a rock out of her way when they stroll in the gardens. He thinks he is a better son now, when he’s leaving her, than he ever has been when he was assured a place by her side. The morning of his departure, he does not find her in her chambers, nor does he seek her face in Heimdall’s observatory. And since he has not asked her presence, she does not give it. It would be harder for both of them, she knows. 

Instead, he leaves her a gift in the middle of her vast, carved work table, sitting on the bare surface, gleaming in the morning light. A ceramic urn, brilliant smooth celadon glaze, with a bouquet of brilliantly blue sea holly and delicate white tea roses spilling from its narrow neck. When she touches it, she can feel his energy surrounding it, and she knows- she knows as long as he is well and in her heart, the flowers will not wilt. 

The moment Heimdall raises his mighty sword, Frigga collapses into her sitting-chair and weeps for the children who leave her, empty armed, full hearted, and feeling older than she has ever felt. 

\--

The day that Loki arrives on Midgard is a day most inauspicious: Stephanie wakes to the smell of something burning in the kitchen, the AI calmly informing her that Mr. Barton has once again managed to set the toaster alight. By the time she makes it down to the common area, the smoke is billowing from the kitchen windows and the toaster is entirely done for. 

“Don’t we have a rule about this?” Wanda says, perched nonchalantly on the edge of the kitchen counter, watching the whole thing with a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. 

“We did,” Stephanie says wearily, before she asks FRIDAY to please, if she would, inform Ms. Potts that we’ll be needing a new toaster  _ again _ . 

“You know, for someone who’s saved the world so many times...” Wanda is saying to Clint as Stephanie turns tail and escapes the charred smell of ruined toast and machinery. 

The next item on the agenda of things that are determined to go wrong is all to do with Peter Quill, who arrives on their doorstep carrying a somewhat explosive specimen of intergalactic goo. The somewhat explosive part isn’t disclosed to Stephanie until after she’s gotten a little too close and is, quite suddenly, entire doused in bright magenta muck. 

“Sorry about that,” Quill says sheepishly when Stephanie exits the chemical showers, her skin and hair dyed an eye-threateningly electric shade of fuschia. “I forget sometimes that terrans don’t always know, y’know- the kinda things I find out there-” 

“Please,” Stephanie says, in a snippy tone she’s not altogether proud of. “Just- make sure no one else gets too close to it until Bruce can get it in the containment unit.” 

The third mishap of the day should win some kind of award for bad timing, when Stephanie picks up her communicator to find an  _ urgent _ message from Peter Parker on it. He’s  _ supposed _ to be arriving in an hour for a weekend of training with them, part of the agreement so he could actually stay a crimefighter and not just be shut down for being a delinquent minor. One weekend a month during the school year, and two weeks a month during summer, Peter’s supposedly joining them as a kind of apprentice in order to maintain the level of safety out on the streets that makes him an effective vigilante. Today, however, he’s having a crisis of a distinctly non-superhero type: a parent-teacher conference that he forgot about until it was too late to call Aunt May and have her come in. She’ll have to park the quinjet on a random basketball court around the corner, but it’s worth it. It  _ will _ be worth it, once Peter finishes the load of extra chores he’s definitely getting for this. 

So Stephanie, in all her pink dyed glory, shows up at Peter’s school to pretend to be a responsible adult, letting him fairly tackle her in an enthusiastic, grateful hug. 

“What happened to you?” he asks, leading her down the hallway towards his science classroom. 

“Don’t ask,” Stephanie says. 

By the time they exit the meeting- 

“I’m so glad that Peter is excelling at Photography, Mr. Stanton, however- I’d like to discuss some worrying things I’ve heard about your science school field trips...” 

-Stephanie is grating on the very finest thin edge of her preternatural patience. She’s normally able to put up with bad days. Horrible days. Days where they lose people, they lose battles, they lose sight of who they are. Fights that have devastated her and people she loves. But every once in a while there’s a day that nags at her, picks at her, until she’s gritting her teeth and struggling with her temper. A no good, terrible, absolutely awful day. Things building up until, even though she can face down the husk of someone she once called lover, even though she can face down the crimson skull that still haunts her dreams, even though she can look at an army and say that she’ll beat them with only her shield- she just can’t draw on one more ounce of patience and grace. 

Today becomes that very sort of day when she arrives back at the base with Peter in tow, his duffle bag slung over his shoulder and his mouth babbling a mile a minute about Mary Jane and science projects and a photography installation he’s been asked to do. Everything is suspiciously, oddly quiet around the base- the kitchen cleaned up, new toaster already in place. The library empty. The training rooms desolate. The living room, however... Peter squeaks loudly beside her, flushing bright red and covering his eyes with one slender hand, turning around immediately. Stephanie just sighs, folding her arms and visualizing what must be a single vein pulsing in her tensed temple. 

“There is one weekend a month, Stark,” she says, her voice barely modulated. “One weekend a month where I ask that we try our very best not to be naked in the common areas. The one weekend a month, every month, where a minor comes to stay with us. You’re supposed to be his mentor, Tony.” Her tone is growing increasingly more disapproving, the way she can never seem to help around Tony, and sometimes Bucky. Who is also standing there, no shame present on his face, completely naked. 

Two grown men, completely buck- no, _stark-_ **no**. Just completely- **naked**. Nude. Standing in the middle of the living room, surrounded by shreds of clothing, a single purple blob in a glass box between them. 

“Don’t be shy, American pie,” Bucky drawls lazily, turning his patented  _ I’m fucking with you, Stephie _ grin her way. It’s something he used to say back when they shared the barracks, back when there weren’t extra tents for delicate sensibilities. Not that she had many left- it was more her unfortunate propensity for deep crimson blushing that lead to rather misleading assumptions about her innocence. “I know you’ve seen this all before.” 

“ _ Has _ she?” the unmistakable tone of one Loki Liesmith rings out from behind Stephanie in the doorway. “How  _ intriguing _ .” 

Of. Fucking. Course. 

“Oh,  _ all _ of it,” Bucky says, his voice turning sharp as his blades, his eyes narrowing dangerously on the man-god-thing behind her. He’s been hovering, lately, ever since her truncated dance with Loki on Asgard. This, she thinks, could potentially be the start of a very antagonistic relationship- Bucky advancing towards them with all that danger in his eyes, the kind she remembers from when he used to puff up over predatory men in the dance halls of their youth. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we have quite a  _ history _ .” 

She can feel her face turning unacceptably red, uncontrollably blushing, because it’s not like Bucky is telling  _ lies _ . They were never  _ in _ love, not the way Thor and Jane are, not the way Pepper and Tony are. But they loved all the same, something deep that crossed oceans of time, and that love had, at times, been physical. A kinship without true courtship. He knows every inch of her body in the way that Earth’s modern day movies might call friends with benefits- and benefits they certainly were. But what bothers her, now, is the way he’s using it like a weapon, jealousy burning off his tongue, a staring match happening over her tensed shoulder. 

“We’ve been a team all in the same room for less than thirty seconds,” she says, voice snapping through whatever Bucky had been about to say next, whatever retort Loki was scheming up behind her. “Perhaps we could adjourn this petty little catfight until all of us are clothed and Thor has the chance to show Loki to his quarters.”  _ I’ll be talking to you later _ , she says silently to Bucky. He looks away nonchalantly, but she knows that he’s quite aware of what she’s communicating. Loki snorts with serrated amusement behind her, turning on his heel to follow Thor down the hallway, and Peter is still squeaking outside the doorway of the living room in mortification. 

Yes, today is going just  _ great _ . 

\--

“I thought you wanted me to make  _ friends _ ,” Stephanie says, her voice lilting pitiful and manipulative. She looks at Bucky with the innocent, puppy dog eyes of a woman who knows how to get what she wants, raising her eyebrows and letting her lip tremble just so. “Weren’t you  _ just _ saying I need to get out and enjoy this century more?”

“With an ancient leather-obsessed alien? Yeah, Stephie,” Bucky snorts, crossing his arms and leaning back against the counter in Stephanie’s kitchenette. He’s not buying it- he never has. “That’s really what I meant when I said ‘go get laid’. When I said ‘go make some friends’, I was really saying go let a sleazeball lunatic who’s on house arrest with us slime all over you. Gosh, you’re so good at reading between the lines.” 

“You could have been more specific than ‘fuck it out, Rogers’,” she points out lightly, squeezing her tea bag out and dumping it in the trash before taking a sip. Maybe the chamomile will make her feel less like she wants to punch her overbearing best friend.  

“Well,” Bucky shrugs, a smirk tugging at his mouth. “I concede that might’ve been open to a little too much interpretation. But don’t play that innocent act with me, Stephie-girl. You’re always chasing after bad news, and you never listen to me before it’s too late. I ain’t looking to see you all smashed up, not when the bad news is stronger than you this time.” 

“You and Peggy weren’t bad news,” she says mildly, raising an eyebrow at him. Bucky just laughs at her, full bodied and echoing, his head tilting back and his eyes crinkling up. 

“Dollface,” he says, bending across the countertop to kiss her cheek. He rests his forehead to hers, metal hand coming up to gently cup her jaw. “It’s cute you still think me and Peggy weren’t bad news, but one of us got you chalked up on illegal steroids and the other one had you nearly jumping from a train, and the combination of us drove you into an iceberg. You got a way of seeing the angel in people when there ain’t nothing holy to be seen, Stephanie Grace.” She breathes in heavy, closing her eyes and reaching out a hand to grasp his tee shirt sleeve, resting her fingers against his hot skin. Running hot like hers, hot with serum. She can feel his pulse, fast like her own, can feel the way he relaxes against her for the briefest of seconds before kissing her other cheek and stepping back. 

“Bossy-boots,” she murmurs, a smile dimpling her cheek, and he laughs once more, blue eyes shining like they never did back during the war when she opens her own. 

“You’re trouble,” he murmurs back, passing her on his way out of the kitchenette, ruffling her hair affectionately. “Always have been.”

“Always will be,” she returns. 

\--

“If you cross us,” Wanda says, the first morning they eat together as a team, “I will ensure that you die a slower and more painful death than you could ever have imagined, in the millennia you have been fucking around in your palace in the sky.” Loki swallows his bite of waffle, interest sparking in his eye. 

“Big words for a small mortal,” he says, through Thor’s muttered warnings that ‘Loki, now is the time to hold your tongue.’ Thor has had a healthy caution when dealing with Wanda since the first time he underestimated her on the battlefield, before she became their teammate.  Wanda simply smiles, the serene smile of a jaguar who knows her teeth are sharper than her prey can comprehend. 

“Listen to your brother, little Loki” she says sweetly, before standing and sweeping regally out of the room. Pietro barely stifles a snort, grabbing an apple in one hand and rising to follow his sister. 

“We’ve crushed stronger men than you,” he grins at Loki before he, too, zips out the door. 

“What a friendly team breakfast,” Loki says lightly, amusement skirting in his tone as he carefully cuts another piece of waffle. Thor looks as though he’s about to face-palm, and is just barely- BARELY- holding himself back. 

Stephanie feels as though she may need hypertension medication by the end of this. 

\--

When Loki steps onto the field that morning, it is unlike any other training arena he has entered. On Asgard, there would have been silence, a begrudgingly given respect to the second prince. On Vanaheim, there would have been the single sound of a bell, a nod to his mother’s heritage. On Alfheim, there would have been the raucous roars of the drunken revelers around him. On Midgard, it seems, there will be nothing but the casual, friendly chatter of his teammates, arranging themselves into positions and ribbing each other gently with bright smiles in the morning sun. They don’t bow before him, nor do they jeer at him unkindly. Instead, Thor claps his shoulder, that ever-brotherly gesture, and steers him towards the good Captain on the other side of the grass filled ring. 

“New and untried, best by her side,” Thor says, a rhyme their mother used to repeat when they’d fall, just learning to walk. At one time it might have irked Loki, but a selfish part of him wants to see how the Captain will fight up close, so he lets Thor send him off. When everyone is in their positions, shifting from side to side, cracking joints and watching Stephanie for instruction, she unholsters her shield and holds it steady in front of her. 

“Capture the flag,” she says, stern and commanding, and- Loki must have missed something, because suddenly everyone is springing into action. Like Stephanie had turned a key and brought the automatons to life, the Avengers are everywhere, distinguishing sides only off of red bandanas tied around one team’s forearms. There are no flags, as far as Loki can tell, but perhaps that’s the test here for him. He’s meant to see how well he can fit into their team without any instruction, how far they will have to go in order to mold him to their form. 

So he enters the fray in the only way he knows how: silently and invisibly, shimmering to shadows and slipping past opponent after opponent, eyes searching for whatever the final prize might be. He can’t see hide nor hair of it, so he turns his attention back towards the Captain, his initial point of interest. 

She fights in a way unlike Sif, unlike Frigga. Unlike Sigyn, even. It’s not far off from the sheer strength of Thor’s blows, but somehow it’s more elegant. She knows her center of gravity like a bosom friend, and uses it to her advantage. Her golden hair flashes like fish in a stream, flicking back and forth as she dodges and weaves through the spar. Perhaps some of it mimics the sheer deadly grace of Natasha, but more likely that part comes from James. He’s by her side, subtly near enough to intervene in a blow if he needed to, but far enough away to fight his own fight. The two of them are night and day, moon and sun, a vast bleeding ocean and the high dome of the heavens above. Where James is dark and quick, deadly and fierce, Stephanie is rose golden power, emanating a sheer force of will that overwhelms her opponents. 

They are beautiful, and Loki thinks he is, maybe, a little bit jealous. 

But he’s watched too long, because he forgets himself in the middle of the battle, his eyes locked on the Captain. It takes not one second of inattention for him to be knocked to the ground, Pietro standing above him with a triumphant smirk, Wanda at his side. 

“Careful, magic man,” he says, his accent thick with mirth, before offering him a hand up. Reluctantly, Loki takes it. Pietro interests him, in some way a young combination of him and Thor all at once. 

The fight doesn’t last more than twenty minutes, enough for the team leaders to gather talking points for a quick debrief so that their training today can focus around areas in need of more work. But it’s long enough to give Loki a real idea of what he’s walked into. Though they be but mortals, his new shield mates are quick, they are full-hearted, and they are bloody fierce with snapping teeth like starving, vengeful wolves. Best of all, they don’t have mocking words for him, jabs about his lack of masculinity, about his sei∂r, the way the Warriors three or the guards of the palace might have. It’s not comfortable, not by far, but Loki thinks it could be. 

\--

There was a time when Stephanie might have been jealous of another girl taking up Bucky’s smiles. It was long ago, back before the ice, before the war, before he’d ever grinned at her with alcohol on his breath, asking “Sugar, you rationed?” as he slid into the bed beside her on a cold winter night. When they were young and foolish, barely teenagers, and Bucky was just discovering how charming he could be. Back then, she didn’t know he’d be with her until the end of the line, and she doubted that she’d stay the shiny new thing forever. She didn’t know what they would be, eighty years in the future. 

Now, though, there is no envy in the pit of her stomach as she watches him lean self-consciously against the wall, his grin effacing and sheepish, his hand on the back of his tan neck. On his other side, dwarfed by his height and his muscles, is Jane Foster’s lab assistant, Darcy. 

She’s beautiful like the kind of girls Stephie and Bucky used to moon over, with curves and long dark hair and a beautiful laugh that could draw all the eyes in the room. She’s also hilarious, and whenever Stephanie has to go into the labs for something she always ends up asking Darcy for it because out of the entire science team, Darcy is by far the most adept at communication and efficiency. Stephanie isn’t surprised that Bucky’s blushing like he’s green, laughing too quickly at all of Darcy’s jokes and pulling out his most rakish grins. He’s leaning like a pro over the tiny woman, and Stephanie has to stifle a snort of laughter when he gingerly reaches out to tuck Darcy’s hair behind her ear, accidentally knocking her glasses askew. Stephanie turns away, letting them have their privacy (as much as they can, with Jane and Bruce peering over their martini glasses at them in an entirely unsubtle way) and moves back into the kitchen to grab another bottle of water. 

“Not drinking, darling Captain?” Loki’s smooth voice says from the direction of the kitchen table as she grabs it from the fridge, the man sitting there in the half darkness with a tall glass of something pink and fizzing in front of him. It takes all her willpower not to turn and fling something at him, defense mechanisms on high. 

“No use in the bitterness without the buzz,” she says, turning around slowly and leaning back against the counter. “I don’t drink much anymore.” 

“Shame,” he says, swirling the liquid in his glass idly, his eyes glittering in the dim glow of the under-cabinet lights. “It’s nice to... let go, sometimes.” 

“I prefer my faculties,” Stephanie says, shrugging and cracking the top off her water, slugging a third of it back at once. It’s cold, clear, icy enough to make her hard palate ache a little. The music out in the common area is upbeat and jazzy with a crooning, rasping voice murmuring unintelligible words. Clearly, Sam is in charge of the playlist tonight. She wonders why he’s in here- why he would hide somewhere that’s not a hiding place at all, instead of retreating back to his room. Why he’s not out there, charming the rest of the team the way he seems capable of. He and Bucky aren’t so different, really, in their levels of appeal. They both weave words in ways her mama told her to watch out for, smooth talking men with silk tongues. 

“So uptight,” Loki says, laughing softly and setting his glass down. He stands, sweeping to his feet in a way that suggests the presence of his leather cape, even though he’s in a simple v-neck shirt and trousers. His hair is mussed a little, falling in his face, cleaner and softer than it looked back on Asgard. “There’s something to be said for finding yourself in losing yourself, you know. But I suspect you’re not much one for vices, are you, darling Captain?” He steps deftly around the kitchen table, picking up his glass again and approaching her with leisurely, long strides. 

She doesn’t move. 

She doesn’t know why, but- she doesn’t  _ move _ . 

Stephanie wishes she could say he’s up in her personal space before she could have done something about it, but the truth is, she had ample time to turn tail and run, rabbit, run. His eyes glitter with more than just kitchen lights up this close, little flickers of silver swimming in the emerald. There’s a little bit of an electric smell, a smell she’s quickly learning to associate with his sei∂r. He contemplates her, less like a predator to prey, and more like an old librarian to an ancient book. Careful fingers turning delicate pages, reading her inside out. 

“No,” he murmurs lowly, smiling slow and sweet like honey. “No, you’re not much one for vices like this. Clean slate, clean heart,” he says, his fingers trailing the edge of her sleeve, his glass cold against her arm. She still doesn’t move, though, except to laugh and tilt her head back. She feels drunk, now, reckless with his presence. Stupid for staying, stupid excited for the risk of it all. 

“If you think I’ve got a clean heart you’re more of a liar than I thought,” Stephanie says mirthlessly, teeth flashing in the shadows. He hums softly, tilting his head back as well, taking a sip from his glass before he offers it to her. She eyes the concoction warily, smelling roses and lemon and honey mead wafting off the bubbling draught. It’s a pretty color, to be sure, but so is mercury, she thinks. 

“It’s safe,” Loki says, shrugging nonchalantly and offering it a little closer, but she shakes her head. No more stupid decisions tonight, no more staying in the kitchen, and certainly no more of Loki looking at her like a sugar cube on his absinthe spoon, ready to be melted down and swallowed whole. 

“Lots of things are safe,” Stephanie whispers, her voice caught up on something she doesn’t care to identify. “Doesn’t mean they’re good.” Loki inclines his head, a smirk curling his lip, and steps back. He toasts her with his tempting glass, taking a long sip from the cup and turning back towards the kitchen table. 

“Sleep well, darling Captain,” he says. A dismissal, but a friendly one, she thinks. Stephanie takes the exit where she can find it. 

She doesn’t sleep well, that night. 

\--

Every time he finds himself watching her, he feels Thor’s eyes on him. It’s irksome, but not enough to stop him. 

There’s something fascinating about the way she laughs, when Tony fucks something up and ends up giggling in a pile of soot. There’s something captivating about the way she smiles into Thor’s shoulder, quietly happy about an achievement. There’s something breathtaking about the way she stands at the head of the battle, strong like the world tree herself. 

He convinces himself he’s watching her because of a childish interest, some foolish little crush like he might have had back when he was a youngling. But it’s not just that, because a fool might become infatuated with a woman like her, but a fool would never go to the lengths which he goes to, to try and become a part of her found family. 

It’s not like him to try and fit in, but at the same time it is- his desperate desire for belonging has become far too strong to avoid. And what he wants, it seems, is to belong next to her. 

\--

Loki has been with them for nearly a month, the first time he appears in Stephanie’s dreams. There is an aspect of penance here, among the Avengers, that he hadn’t anticipated- the growing pain of watching them suffer for things. The more he becomes attached to them, to their quirks, their frail mortality, the more he realizes what he had brought to their world. The nightmares, in particular. Echoes of battles hard fought and hard won. Sometimes, on the worst of days, hard lost. The first time he had awoken to a scream in the night, his heart racing with the sudden adrenaline of surety that they were under attack, Thor was in his doorway in an instant. 

“It’s just James,” he’d said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Some nights, he dreams of a past that haunts him, and wakes in a panic. Stephanie will handle it.” But that thought, the haunting pasts his new teammates bore like Atlas-burdens on their shoulders, stuck with him. The second time he awakes to the helpless tears of Pepper Potts, only audible through the halls to his over-sensitive ears. 

“I didn’t die,” Tony says, his voice softer than Loki has ever heard. “I didn’t die.” 

It doesn’t take very many more awakenings before Loki decides what he’s going to do. His stay here, fighting beside them, is supposedly about more than just the base balance of rights and wrongs Loki has committed in the grand scheme of the universe. It’s about more than just zeroing out his ledgers. The first aspect of growth, the first leaf upon a branch in springtime, comes almost without thought. He doesn’t think on it overly, dwell on the consequences or the benefits. The sixth time he wakes from a dead sleep to the distress of a dreaming Avenger, Loki slips between the veils of the shadows on instinct, reaching out for the tangled tangerine dreams of one Bruce Banner. 

The green man in Bruce’s head (in Bruce’s heart) is tossing and turning, watching a woman with dark curls and scared eyes fall endlessly from the top of a skyscraper. He can’t reach out toward her, nor can he turn away. After Loki watches for a few moments, he realizes that the woman never hits the ground either, leaving Bruce in painful limbo. No ability to change the fate, nor to accept its inevitable end. It doesn’t take much for Loki to reach out, a single gentle finger tapping the top of the green man’s head. Silver magic, bleeding down the veins, until BruceHulkBruceHulk can reach out and pull the woman to safety. 

“Betty,” he rumbles, his nose touching her much smaller hand. She smiles, her dream-eyes no longer so terrified, softening and warming like sun upon snow. Loki slips out of the dream in the whisper of a second, leaving it far less tangled, and leaving Bruce sleeping peacefully once more. 

After this, it’s hardly a question that Loki will continue. There’s something so- soothing, perhaps, is the word- about taking the dreams of the tortured, turning them into gentler things. Dreams had always been for mischief, upon Asgard, but here he finds them to be his own peace. A place where he can do something that no one else can, to make a change that the others will not even notice. The dreamlands are a realm which Loki rules without a dynasty to uphold, the expectations of a father looming over him. They are to him what water might be for a fish- his own element, as easy to manipulate as breathing. It’s a kinship Loki had never expected to come out of this penance, but it’s one that he, in his most secret moments, finds he treasures. 

He never dares go near Thor, the older man had learned to sense his presence hundreds of years ago. Nor does he go near Jane- she has Thor for nightmares, and he’s content to leave them at that. Wanda never seems to dream, and he wouldn’t expect Vision to. But the rest of them, he’ll come to, in the deadest hours of the night when their restlessness can be heard from his quarters. 

\--

Natasha dreams of ballerinas, twirling skirts stained red with blood. The red in her ledger dripping down her fingers as she pirouettes, sautes, stands at attention in pointe shoes as white as snow. There are brass knuckles hanging from her sash, daggers in her bouquets, guns pointed at her as she takes a stunning bow. Little red laser sights like freckles on her cheeks, her arms trembling as the ballerinas around her fall, one by one, until the Sugar Plum Fairy is left standing in a crimson pool, surrounded by fallen Snowflakes whose dead eyes see right through Loki where he stands just off stage left. He feels intrusive, seeing her cry then, falling to the ground with her arms spread wide, but it’s small victory to twist his fingers, flick them towards her. 

Her breath comes slower, calmer, when he leaves her standing there, pointing a gun a panel of judges with stern faces and sharp uniforms, their rank enameled on badges on their lapels. The shots ring out in the dream ether behind him as he walks on. 

\--

Sam dreams of falling, falling, falling- but it’s never he who falls. A man with a grin like the first beam of starlight across a still pond falls, and Sam can never catch him. Just like Bruce, watching Betty fall, Sam cries out for Riley in the shadows of his dreams, tossing and turning in his bed with a tortured look on his face. He cries for every veteran who swallowed a bullet when they came back home, for every mother with hollow arms and hollow eyes standing by a hollow gravesite. 

When Loki’s palm rests heavy on Sam’s forehead, Sam opens a white paneled door to find Riley standing on the other side, a pair of broken wings in his arms. Riley drops the wings and folds Sam into a hug, and the furrows on the man’s forehead smooth. 

He moves.

\--

Bucky dreams of something terrible, something horrible twisting him up inside and sending sharp ice through his veins. He dreams of a dance hall, lit up amber and smokey, the horns blaring loud and the laughter ringing louder. There are two women on the dance floor, hand in hand, giggling at each other with red lipstick and red cheeks. One has blond hair, done up like a swiss milkmaid, haphazardly arranged with stolen bobby pins. The other has hair in an auburn brown pincurl, her teeth flashing pearls beneath her rationed makeup. They fall into each other like lovers do, like close friends might, for show- they wrap their arms around each other, drunk on love and the adrenaline of the battlefront. 

He loves them both, he loves them both, he loves them- He watches them laugh and he watches them love, and he drinks his beer, content in the knowledge that here, at least, they are safe. Here, there are no bombs, no guns, no knives. No bullets, no fists, no blood. Stephanie wears a white dress, the kind he imagines he might have married her in. There is rationed lace, yellowed with age, on the edges of the sweet, dipping neckline. Her shoes are just the old navy pumps they used to make her wear on stage, but he loves the way they make her legs look, peeking out from beneath that swirling tea-length skirt. He can picture a veil with her sea-side eyes underneath it- the ring on her finger, where he’d promised her they’d wed when the war was over. Because they weren’t a romance for the ages, no, but they were as good as either of them were likely to get, and they weren’t leaving each other’s sides anyway. 

Or at least they weren’t until Peggy, with her red dress flaring out around her knees and her laugh so bright and strong. But Bucky doesn’t begrudge them anything, would happily marry Stephanie anyway, the three of them loved up living in a brownstone back in Brooklyn. 

He loves them, loves them, loves them, until he closes his eyes for once second and, between a blink and the next, his left arm is halfway through the white dress, red dripping down around the metal. Peggy lies on the ground, unseeing eyes open, betrayed, a knife in her stomach, and Stephanie’s there in his arms in the sickest parody of the way he used to hold her late at night when the old radio died down. 

“I loved you,” she whispers, breath tattery and hoarse. Her fingertips graze the edge of his cheek, tears flowing from his eyes, and Loki-

Reaches out, pushes out into the shadows of Bucky’s dream, a parallel pain running through his own chest as he watches the Soldier cry. 

This one takes more effort, perhaps because Bucky’s brain has been messed about so many times that it’s a wonder it’s not just a pile of mud on the floor. It resists him, pulling away, like the man’s self hatred is acting like a masochistic shield. But he pushes through, until his fingers can rest where Stephanie’s had on the edge of Bucky’s face and he can turn this all into the dream it is, bringing Stephanie and Peggy back to life. 

They sit on the edge of a dock together, legs swinging, toes dipping into the warm water, Bucky sandwiched between them. The tears stop. 

“I love you,” Stephanie says, once more. 

Loki turns away. 

\--

Pietro dreams something simple, something visceral. One moment, Wanda is there in his arms, and the next she’s underneath the warhead on their bedroom floor, her eyes cold and grey. His is the easiest to fix, because Loki simply has to conjure up the memory of what actually happened. Of how they lived- they lived, together. They lived through the bombs dropping and the unrest. 

Pietro is never more complicated than the last Avenger Loki comes to. 

\--

It takes far longer than the others for Loki to brave Stephanie’s dreams. He doesn’t choose to analyze it, but a nagging feeling in his subconscious chalks it up to simple fear. He’s afraid of her. She shakes his foundations like no one he’s ever encountered, and it irks him that this mortal girl can stand in the way of his aloof demeanor, can complicate things in a way that eludes the unravelling skills of the liesmith, the silvertongue himself. 

The other thing is that Stephanie rarely seems to have nightmares. Her dreams are sad, but they’re sad like the still, calm waters of a lake after a funeral. Sad like the quiet mourning of a widow, or the shell-shocked hollowness of a lonely soldier. They don’t have the violence of Tony’s warhead dreams, or the crushing fear of the dreams where Clint opens his eyes to find Laura and the children on the floor before him, bullets in their hearts. No, Stephanie’s dreams are remarkable for their silence, for the way they seem to fade into the background behind the cacophony of her teammates. 

When he is finally brave enough to venture into them, he finds them icy cold. A chill world, laid out to look like summertime, buzzing with fireflies and heavy golden August moons. But it feels like the middle of January in his bones when he walks through the trees towards the clearing where Stephanie lies, watching the stars above. 

“Little lionheart,” he says, nearly silent under his breath. “Darling Captain.” He doesn’t expect her to hear him- in fact, does his best to make sure she won’t, but her head swings towards him anyway. 

“You’re not who I expected,” she says calmly, her eyes deep and dark here in the dream realm. “Usually it’s lovers lost, not pain in my ass present.” He laughs low and quiet under the buzz of lightning bugs. 

“Do they come to you?” he asks, drawing closer, sitting beside her. “The ones you miss?”

“I’m always missing someone,” she says vaguely, seemingly content to lay here in her frozen field, not even noticing the tears that slide down her cheeks. It’s as though she doesn’t even know she’s sad. Perhaps it’s that she’s become so accustomed to it she knows no other way of being. 

“Or missing one in particular,” Loki says after a moment, thinking back on night after night of watching Bucky mourn the lady loves he’d known back in the wartime. “Was she truly that extraordinary, your Miss Carter?” 

“All that and more,” Stephanie murmurs. He makes a small sound, and then he shifts slightly closer. When she looks at him, his eyes are genuinely curious, uncharacteristically soft in the sharp, pale lines of his face. Something about him in her dream-realm is fuzzy, smoothed out around the edges- even his voice seems smoother, more mesmerizing, as it echoes in this dreamtime meadow. 

“Is that why you remain solitary? Holding a lover’s candle still lit for the one you were torn from?” He doesn’t mean to pry, doesn’t really mean to stay. This isn’t the type of nightmare he can fix, nor the type of dream he can manipulate. There’s no need to bring her here, Miss Carter. A mirage of her would do nothing to soothe the ragged wounds of this icy world. But he asks anyway, helpless like a child half-gone on their first crush. 

“So many questions for someone who acts like he knows all the answers,” she says, gripping at the grass with knuckles turned nearly white for a second before releasing it and sighing. “No, I let that flame go out months ago.  _ Years _ ago. The moment I knew for sure that this was no dream- that I wasn’t going back. She was more than extraordinary, but she’s also gone now. I’ll always love her, but it came time to let myself stop being  _ in _ love with her.” Stephanie looked up again, green eyes following her. “No, I’m single because I haven’t really gotten a chance to date since I let Peggy go, what with spending most of my time saving the world. And it’s hard to introduce yourself to a blind date when none of them have the security clearance needed to tell them how old you even are.” She smiled wryly. “Not many 20-somethings willing to date a girl who’s actually in her nineties.” 

“That’s nothing, compared to my thousands,” Loki scoffs, his smirk curling upwards even more. 

“Yeah, I’m some spring chicken, huh?” 

“A warrior could do much worse than to court you,” he offers, when the silence lapses after her words. “You are possessing of that which even Odin would find honorable, despite his certain displeasure at the amount of orders you seem to disregard.” 

“That would be almost sweet, if it weren’t coming from someone who I know doesn’t find those same qualities all that much of an incentive.” she snorts. “No need speak as though you’re stealing compliments from Thor’s mouth.” 

“For all his faults and short-sightedness, Thor has always been a greater judge of character than I,” he says quietly. “And for all his foolishness, he has always chosen better shield-mates. I cannot help but factor his judgement in, darling Captain.” 

“Then why not compliments of your own?” she asks. When he doesn’t answer, she rolls over a little closer and asks again- “Why are you here, Loki?” 

“You are something,” he says slowly, “that I have not seen in a very long time. And I do not let puzzles go unsolved.” It isn’t the answer he expects to fall from his lips, but once it’s out, he finds it’s not far off the truth. So much for Loki Liesmith. 

“Curiosity killed the cat,” she shrugs, watching him as he moves fluidly to his knees, nimble fingers reaching out to pluck a daisy from the grass. Here, she does not feel the need to react to his every movement. Here, he cannot hurt her with any quicksilver sleight of hand. 

“And satisfaction will surely bring it back,” he nearly purrs, his hand snaking out to place the daisy in her hair, his fingertips brushing across her bottom lip and causing shivers to run up and down her spine, heat blooming in her cheeks. 

The last thing she sees is his smug smirk, those dark eyes taking in the way her cheeks pink at his touch, before she wakes with a start.

\--

He’s an idiot, to have touched her dreams, and he knows it. Thor can smell his magic on all of them, the mornings after he’s meddled with their sleep, but Thor can also sense that he’s not using the sei∂r for anything malicious, so he’s let Loki go on his way. The morning after Loki enters Stephanie’s dream, though, Thor’s waiting outside his door when he tries to leave for breakfast, his arms crossed and his eyes thunderous. 

“You’ll play no tricks on her,” he says, his voice low and threatening in a way it hasn’t been for many a moon. “I swear to you, Loki, she has had enough heartbreak for even one of our kind to bear.” 

“It was no trick,” Loki snaps, his hackles rising in immediate defense. “And don’t speak to me like a child, Thor, as though I know nothing of heartbreak.” His brother softens immediately, reaching out a huge hand to rest gently on his shoulder. 

“Come to her in daylight hours,” Thor says gently, his gaze unbearably intense. “These warriors know nothing of the reality of dreams.” 

“Perhaps,” Loki says, shrugging Thor’s hold off and sweeping by him. He slows just enough that Thor can catch up and walk with him, and Thor’s smug happiness is enough to suffocate him in such close quarters, but he can’t bring himself to regret lending his brother that small joy. 

They will never truly be whole-hearted, carefree brothers again. But they are building something new, here. Something different. Something lasting, without a foundation of deceptions. 

\--

He visits her more in the dreams, though, despite what Thor says. There, she is soft like a gentle, joyful queen might be. There, she finds a peace Loki rarely sees on her face in her waking hours. 

He can’t help but jealously guard it all for himself. 

\--

They train, and train, and train. They train like they’re going into their last war, and they train like they’re going into their first. They fight alongside each other through rust and blood, through the searing pain of blades and bullets and broken bone. It is, surprisingly, not as hard as he thought it might be to slip into their ranks. The Avengers are warriors enough that Asgard might fear them, he thinks. He can feel Stephanie’s eyes on him every time he maneuvers himself around her, taking a hit meant for her shield or a blow meant for her flesh. It’s nothing more than what a good teammate might do, but it earns him a glare and begrudging gratitude from Barnes, and a small smile of approval from Thor. 

He can prove himself to be a part of this team, the way he once proved himself worthy of fighting alongside the Warriors Three. 

And every strike that slots into place, every enemy that falls to his feet, every time his staff makes contact with another faceless villain, he can feel the puzzle pieces coming back together. He can feel it like skin stitching itself shut, a wound healing in his heart that the stars had cut open many months ago. He can feel the dark shadow of Thanos losing its crushing grasp on his ribcage. 

Loki can feel himself becoming whole. 

\--

It’s just dumb luck, or perhaps fate, that Stephanie manages to, in an epically Amazonian fashion, slay an honest to god dragon and then get trapped in a cabin with Loki. It’s hard to recognize him on the battlefield at first, because she’s very near passing out from the extreme pain where a poisoned claw had slashed open a frightening amount of her thigh. When green eyes swim into view, though, she knows who the dark figure standing over her is. The battle had been long and hard and unnecessary: a true monument to the stupidity of Hydra. Through rituals they had no knowledge of, and magic they had no control over, the organization’s attempt at creating a portal through which to draw creatures of Svartalfheim that might be used nefariously here on Earth had gone horribly awry. It hadn’t taken long for the Avengers to be notified of the three dragons wreaking havoc in the remote wilderness of Montana (what a place for dragons to be). They’d split up- why not? The dragons had seemed small, from the quinjet. But splitting up was never, Stephanie was finding out, a good idea.  

The dragon had been startlingly intelligent, enough so that Stephanie actually felt bad about killing it. Or rather,  _ had _ felt bad up until one venom-slick claw had slit right up her quadriceps. She had no idea where Wanda and Pietro were, but they’d been by her side up until the fire in her leg has started to make the edges of her vision a little blurry. Loki was supposed to be with Thor and Tony. Stephanie isn’t very surprised to see that he’s not with them any longer. 

“Oh, darling Captain,” he sighs, tutting his tongue at her and bending down beside where she lies panting in the pine needles. “Where are your white knights now?” 

She doesn’t have the strength to tell him that the rest of the Avengers are probably off in similarly perilous situations, as he fucking well knows- or to slug him one, which she’d also like to do. Instead, she simply breathes out a low whine and tries her best not to choke on her own tears. Her pain tolerance is high, but a poisonous gash the length of her thigh is tipping dangerously over the top of it. It feels terrifying and new, to be so weak in front of him. A cool hand brushes briefly at the edge of the furling skin, torn back viciously with claws sharper than any sword she’s ever seen, and that’s all it takes to send her spiraling down into the darkness she’d been fighting. She thinks she hears someone mutter her name frantically before everything goes black, but the rushing in her ears drowns it out. 

When she awakes, she’s in some sort of old cottage, a cabin or something, with a fire flickering out of the corner of her blurry vision. It takes a moment to recall who, exactly, she remembered picking her up, and what they’d likely done. From the brief shifting she can manage, Stephanie can feel the wound has mostly closed on her thigh, a bitter metallic taste in her mouth, and the weight of familiar green eyes on her skin near the corner by the fire. She can’t seem to tell whether the wound has closed because it’s healing, or whether Loki has stitched it up with something. 

There’s a hole in the pit of her stomach, growing ever larger with each moment he spends staring silently at her where she lies on the bed. It’s an old myth in her head, a dark prince waiting by the fire for his sunshine bride. Hard not to laugh, at that, the idea of Loki as a tortured underworld god. 

“You gonna offer me a pomegranate or something?” she says, staring at the ceiling of the cabin, trying to regulate her breathing and not pull the stitches she can feel burning in the skin of her thigh. 

“Don’t fancy yourself a Persephone, little lionheart,” he says snidely from beside the fire, the marble of his pestle barely clinking as he grinds something that smells even more potently disgusting than the barracks of Stephanie’s memories. “Hydra’s back on the move, and I can’t reliably bring you back to base without help. Fighting dragons is difficult work, even for a sei∂r user like me.” The mixture hurts like a bitch when he drips the liquid from the mortar onto the stitches, bad enough that she bites her lip until blood is drawn to keep from screaming. 

“Fucking hell,” she says, incapable of courtesy when it feels like her leg is actually aflame. “What is that?”

“Something to keep you from escaping your mortal coils just yet,” Loki says, his voice almost sorry as his long, elegant fingers dip into the paste and rather gently dab it along the wound. This time, she can’t bother to hold the scream in, and he looks pained through her tears, his face a drawn out grimace. “Well, your lungs seem to be in working order.” 

“I have only rude words for you, Loki,” she gasps, gripping at the bedclothes. It takes a few minutes before she can breathe easily again, the pain subsiding achingly slowly. When Stephanie feels like she might be able to move without throwing up all over the bed, herself, and her reluctant cabin-mate, she hoists herself up into a sitting position. The wound on her thigh is a bloody silver, like mercury mixed in with cinnabar. There are stitches holding the wound closed, something green and sticky looking. It doesn’t feel like the thread she’s used to. In fact, it looks rather more like something alive, a vine growing through her skin. 

“What is that?” she asks after a moment, beating back the urge to touch it. “That you’ve stitched my leg with?” Loki shrugs, filling the medicine bowl with water from the rusting kitchen sink and throwing a few flower petals in it before setting it down by the fire. 

“I don’t think you have it here on Midgard. There is no word for it I know the Allspeak could translate or otherwise. It’s a kind of underwater plant that grows at the base of the fire mountains of muspelheim. The waters there boil like a kettle, but these plants grow nonetheless. My- Frigga says that’s why they grow so strong,” he says hoarsely, settling back in his chair. “It won’t take much to dissolve it once you heal. She’s taught me many a spell with it.” 

They’re silent for a while, Stephanie breathing through the itching burn of a healing wound and Loki closing his eyes, seeming to doze off. When she feels like she can stand, though, her bladder protesting and her stomach growling, his eyes snap right back open. 

“Don’t stand,” he says, gaze sharp and reprimanding. “You’ll rip it right back open.” 

“I feel disgusting,” she says, a little snippier than she means to. “I just need to go to the bathroom and wash some of this blood off.” 

“Are you trying to land yourself in Helheim?” he snaps back, standing and pacing towards her across the creaking wooden floor of the cabin. “Foolish girl,” he huffs, tugging the blanket beneath her with more care than she probably deserves. 

“It won’t come open,” she says, softer this time, letting herself move without thinking and bracing one hand on his shoulder, hoisting herself up to her feet. She manages to stand under his disapproving gaze, stepping away from him as soon as the ground feels steady beneath her. He doesn’t move to stop her, but he hovers over her like a nursemaid- or worse, like Bucky, back when she’d spent most nights retching and struggling to breathe. 

The bathroom is a terrible retro mess, but it has some old toiletries in it that are probably useful. Stephanie sits on the cracking yellowed toilet, her hands shaking and achy from the aftereffects of the poisoning. Her uniform, meant to be durable and definitely good in a fight, is not quite as good when the fight is over. Her fingers can’t seem to grasp the zippers, and the straps elude her. Loki lets her have her pride for a solid five minutes before he speaks. 

“Let me assist you-” he says, his voice tired and rusted with the pain of watching her  struggle. 

“I’ve handled far more than this before,” she hisses, insides soured and bitter from the insults of the day. Things she should not have let bother her- but things that did, nonetheless. Stephanie had never enjoyed being helpless. She especially didn’t like feeling helpless here, under the gaze of a man who confuses her like this. Who makes her emotional in ways she isn’t entirely comfortable with. “I don’t need your help.” 

He simply stands there in the doorway for a long moment as she braces herself against the counter and tries, once more, to unzip her costume, his face calm and his eyes uncomfortably knowing. 

“You don’t seem to need anyone’s help,” he remarks coolly. 

“I spent a lot of years needing  _ everyone’s _ help,” she says after a minute, her fingers finally ripping the zipper from its snag. It’s not an apology, but he wouldn’t want one anyway. He can see it for what it is. She finally gets the shirt of her uniform off, just her heavy-duty sports bra and her uniform pants on. Her boots have been lost, somewhere back in the main cabin. Loki probably took them off of her while she was unconscious, and she both appreciates and hates that he’d cared for her that way. Appreciates that it was his instinct to do so, but hates that she wasn’t awake to see it. To parse the look on his face, or the tremors in his tired hands. 

“You won’t be able to wash the wound without damaging it,” Loki says, when she’s gotten herself down to just her pants and bra.  _ Please _ , he says, with just his greyed out eyes.  “We don’t know what waits for us in the sun, Stephanie.” 

It’s the use of her name that gets her attention, and, with a heaving sigh, she leans against the back of the toilet and closes her eyes. 

“You’re right,” she grits out after a deep breath, opening her eyes again and gesturing for him to join her in the bathroom. It hurts a little to accept this- to surrender to this. But he’s right, he is. They don’t know what’s out there, and they don’t know how it will effect the battle for Stephanie to be hobbled like this. He turns, going back out into the main room for a moment, and Stephanie feels the burn of rejection keenly. Anger, at the idea that he’d made her surrender and then snubbed her like that. But it dies out like a match in the wind when he reappears in the doorway, holding the bowl full of petals and warm water that he’d set on the hearth. He kneels before her, his hands gently cupping her knee and turning her leg out so that he can sit between her thighs. 

When his hand dips down into the warm water and drips it gently down the length of her wound, settling with a wide palm directly over the widest part of the gash, she can’t help but hiss a quick breath. It hurts, deeply and viscerally. But she can see the green writhing beneath his palm and the silver and blood washing away. Her pants are going to be ruined entirely by this. He washes the entire wound with the water, until there’s nothing but pale skin and sickly red where the edges of her skin butt up against each other. When he finally looks up at her, she realizes she’s been staring at him this whole time. Loki takes a deep breath, his other hand coming up to cup her other thigh. 

“Darling Captain,” he says softly, almost as though he hadn’t meant to say it at all. “Fragile little soldier.” Her hand clenches over his on her thigh, jaw tightening. 

“A fragile soldier wouldn’t have slain a dragon, silvertongue,” she says, metal in her voice. He just laughs, brusque and sad. 

“Dragonslayers all meet their match eventually,” he murmurs, standing, looming over her. One pale, elegant hand gently sweeps her hair off of her forehead, wet and limp with sweat. Stephanie sighs, almost too tired to fight back. She wants to close her eyes. She wants to fall forward, bury her face in his neck. Because he’s right, he’s strong, and she’s- strong, but not like him. But it’s not in her nature, never was. Not to give up, nor to cower behind a stronger sword. 

“It’s like you’re determined to infuriate me,” she mutters tiredly, bracing one hand on the counter and the other on the shower door, levering herself up and maneuvering around him to stumble awkwardly back out to the bed. She stubs her toe on the doorjamb, bitterness curling in her stomach when his hand catches her, steadying her and leading her through to the main room of the cabin. The pettiest, most stubborn part of her wants to shove the blankets he drapes over her off onto the floor, to roll over onto her injured side and sleep in the cold. But she’s exhausted, sick and sore, aching and unwell. So she lets him bundle her up like a feverish child, and silently resents ever needing anyone’s help under the mountain of fleece and wool he piles upon her. 

The sun rises sluggishly, hours of fitful dozing between them. Sometimes she wakes to find his eyes on her face, and sometimes she wakes to see him snoring gently in his chair by the door. The fire never flickers out, though. She knows it’s his sei∂r keeping it alive. 

By the time they hear the cracking of sticks and the rumbling of voices outside, the two of them are rested enough to hobble to their feet, Loki peering out a side window to confirm that it is, in fact their allies that have found them. Sam and Natasha are walking up the path, civilian clothes on. Stephanie can tell from the way they walk that they’re heavily armed. Natasha is the one who knocks on the door, and her smile is a quick light when she sees Loki and Stephanie in the cabin. 

“Lucky,” Sam says, stepping inside to peruse the contents of their makeshift safe house. “Tasha and I had to hide out in someone’s old burned out barn.” Stephanie snorts, flinging the blankets off of herself and leveraging herself up using the bedframe. She’s still wobbly, but not more than a twisted ankle might make her. Her undershirt and ruined pants make enough of an outfit to trek back to the quinjet, after Natasha throws a big hoodie at her and she pulls on her boots. The hoodie smells like Bucky’s old-fashioned cologne, spicy and familiar, and it makes her warm from the pit of her stomach up, her fingers clutching it tightly around her stomach as they slowly make their way back to the rest of their team. 

She falls asleep on the flight back to the base, and wakes up in her own bed, the green stitches on her now-healed thigh mysteriously gone. FRIDAY won’t tell her who carried her back in, citing privacy protocols, and neither will anyone else. 

Their silence is an answer in itself. 

\--

A long time ago, when Loki was much smaller, a child still, his cousin Freyr had sat upon Odin’s throne as a prank. Loki had found it hilarious, the faces he had made in imitation of Odin, but then, Freyr had touched the Gugnir, and, upon touching it, he had fallen very still. The prank had stuck with Loki for days, even after Freyr had staggered to his feet and quietly walked from the room. Loki had thought that Freyr was simply mocking the way Odin would sometimes move when he fell upon a vision from the Norns, but then, a fortnight later, Freyr had returned from wherever he had gone a-questing with news that shook the palace to its core. 

He had greeted Heimdall with a bright face and an empty scabbard, and he had walked into the halls of Asgard with his hand wrapped in cloth, and held in it the hand of a Jotunn maid, who walked quietly beside him. Loki had thought her monstrous- tall and runed, with eyes like blood spilling out across the gathered crowd, and hair in braids that seemed like frozen snakes tumbling down her back. The Jotunn maid was Ger∂r Gymirdottír and Freyr had sought her out after having seen her in a vision from Gugnir. He had given up his sword, Lævateinn, for her hand, and he beamed at the crowd- he was in love. 

The welcome was not warm- no warmer than Ger∂r herself. Freyr and Ger∂r had not stayed in the halls of Asgard- they had retreated to Freyr’s native mountains of Vanaheim after the counsel of Freyr’s beloved sister Freyja, for fear that any child borne by their union might be shunned forever. Freyr had been willing to live with the whispers and the shame for the love of Ger∂r, but he had not been willing to bring a child into those same shadows he now inhabited. 

Loki had thought him a fool, once upon a time. In his own adventures, a century after the marriage of Freyr and Ger∂r, Loki would win Lævateinn back from Skirnir, who had taken it in exchange for Ger∂r’s hand, and he would bring it to them in their Vanir home. 

“Take back your pride,” Loki had said, holding Lævateinn out to the smiling Vanir. But Freyr had simply laughed, hefting the small weight of his newborn son Fjölnir up further, and he had shaken his head. 

“Keep my pride, Silvertongue,” Freyr had told Loki. “I have no need of war any longer. I gave up Lævateinn for peace with Ger∂r, and look what it has brought me- Fjölnir Freyrson and Ger∂r Gymirdottír and a peaceful home. There is more pride in that than any battle could bring.” He shrugged. Loki had simply stared in incredulity, expecting that, as Thor had told him, Freyr would gladly take up his sword once more now that it had been liberated from Skirnir the fearsome. 

“I do not understand,” he had said, Lævateinn hanging loosely in his hands as Fjölnir began to stir fretfully with hunger. 

“Perhaps one day you will find a love that leaves you empty of the fear of Helheim. Then, you will understand. There is no glory in battle one cannot find in love, Odin-son.” Freyr turned, giving the fussing Fjölnir to Ger∂r to nurse, and smiled at Loki as he had done many years ago, when Freyr was but a benevolent presence next to Freyja and Loki was but a mischievous child. “I wish for you that Lævateinn will swing true, and that one day you find a glory greater than the blood she spills in your defense.” 

When Loki left Freyr, slipping out silently as the Vanir had cooed over the quieting Fjölnir, cradled to Ger∂r’s cold breast, he had left with a bitterness in him. What a fool, he had thought, to give up his prowess as a warrior for the squalling babe and the monstrous wife that had been the cause of his disgraced leave from Asgard. 

Now, Loki supposed he might know how Freyr had thought that day. Ger∂r was, in truth, beautiful, and Freyr had been wiser than perhaps nearly all of Asgard (save Frigga, who had always been farther sighted than the rest of the palace.) In some ways, Freyr was wrong. Ger∂r was not a warrior, not as the woman Loki had fallen for was. Giving up battle was not the measure of love, not for Loki. Freyr had known truth in the idea of sacrifice, but Loki’s sacrifice would have to be different. Indeed, when one was longing for a warrior who resided among the ranks of the Avengers, giving up the sword would not be an option. Lævateinn has a different part to play this time.

Lævateinn hadn’t brought Loki the glory he’d expected over the years, given the inauspicious beginning of his ownership, and now it lays in a chest at the foot of his bed in the old house he’d taken ownership of in the far north. He could, perhaps, have given it to Thor, who might have some use of it. Jane might find it fascinating, and Tony certainly would, given his lack of experience with the forgery of any of the other nine realms. He could, perhaps, send it back to Asgard, to the halls where it had seemed to belong in the first place, or Vanaheim, where surely there was another Vanir not so selfless to refuse it as Freyr had. 

But there’s an image nagging at the back of his mind, an image of a woman with brilliant blond hair and a bright, circular shield, holding Lævateinn in front of her as she faces off against her enemies without fear. He knows that she stands in front of her team, but in the blurry image, he cannot tell who stands directly beside her: whether it is merely shadows, or another being, he does not see. It’s unsettling how much he wants to be that shadow in the moment, disconcerting how much he wishes to see Stephanie’s hand wrap around the hilt of Lævateinn and heft it high and glorious, a beacon on the battlefield. Surely, though, Thor would recognize it, for if there is one part of their studies Thor had paid attention to, it was weaponry. And Thor would know Lævateinn for what it meant, passing from Loki’s hand to Stephanie’s, and that, Loki thinks, would not do. 

Oh, perhaps Freyr was right about there being a glory greater in love and romance than there is in any battle. Battle, though, is far less complicated. Loki likes puzzles, whether they are wrought by his own hand or not, but this is a puzzle he would have cared never to stumble across. 


	3. The Battles of Edda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephanie finds herself closer to the magical realms than she was before- and with them come entirely new challenges. 
> 
> (With concepts taken from the Norse myths of Amma's tests, the mead of poetry, the song of the mill stone, and briefly, the blade called Rage.)

There’s not always glory in the aftermath of a battle- in fact, Stephanie rarely ever feels the flush of war that epic poems might imply. Instead, most often, she feels cold. Cold, and vaguely empty, her breathing slowing and the tunnel vision of adrenaline fading away. There are nearly always casualties, though uncommon on the side of the Avengers, and then there are the days when she sits in a cloud of settling dust and feels the vast weight of failure to save civilians bearing down upon her shoulders. But battles are her way of life, her duty. Thor had once called her a priestess on the altar, with her shield held up towards the sun. She feels less a divine right to victory, and more a driving responsibility. The mind may not be willing, but while the flesh is still strong, Stephanie can’t bear to leave the Earth undefended. 

In her experience, battles are functions of war. They are bitter, sour, angry things. 

Asgardians, she’s slowly learning, see battles as something entirely different. Stephanie supposes that when you see a millennia of war, it becomes less shocking, less immediate. Maybe that’s not entirely true: Thor certainly seems to be affected by each and every casualty, and Loki isn’t unaffected either, though he doesn’t show it near as much. But it certainly seems they’re more accustomed to the weariness, the pain. And it is entirely true that their lives have consisted of many, many more quests than Stephanie ever completed. Quests are something out of old fairytales, the type of thing a prince might do to win the hand of his lady love. Perhaps it’s fitting that Thor and Loki have won many a quest- they are, after all, something out of old fairytales themselves. 

It should have been expected that having Thor and Loki around would introduce them all to the world of old magic, a world lurking just beneath the surface of the Midgard they knew. 

But it still comes a surprise, the first time Stephanie opens the front door to find a willowy tall soldier with brilliant copper armor and a mass of blue, curly hair. He bows low, nose nearly brushing his knees, before handing her a scroll with careful copper gloves. 

“A missive from her royal majesty Amma,” the man says, in a thick accent Stephanie can’t place. He doesn’t wait for a reply, rather turning on his heel and walking off into the still dawn. He doesn’t get into a car, doesn’t disappear into thin air. Stephanie watches him walk off into the horizon until she can see him no longer, glancing between his retreating figure and the scroll in her hand. 

She needs a cup of coffee and an Asgardian prince to deal with this. 

\--

The scroll turns out to hold an invitation to a great ball being held by the ruler of Alfheim, Queen Amma the Claimless. 

“She has no claim because she’s been around longer than anyone might say,” Thor says, sipping his hazelnut latte serenely and lounging in what appears to be a hello kitty bathrobe. Stephanie suspects Darcy has been on Amazon ordering things through same-day shipping again. “Odin and Frigga may know how old Amma is, but they’re not likely to share that information. It is of no consequence, anyhow. This is a test by her, to see if the halls of Asgard are yet crumbling, or whether we stand still united.” 

“Amma holds a fine party,” Loki says, from his spot rifling through the fridge. It hadn’t taken him long to betray his true nature as a food scavenger, the bane of leftovers everywhere. 

“It’s best we attend,” Thor decides, setting his mug down and straightening the ties of his bathrobe as Jane enters the kitchen, stumbling sleepily. She’s clearly been in the lab all night, still in her dingy white coat and with her hair haphazardly tied back. “It will do neither Asgard nor Midgard any good to let Amma think we live divided.” He lets Jane beeline directly (well, not quite in a straight line, but she eventually gets there) into his arms, enfolding her and lifting her up so she can bury her face in his neck. His face is fond, achingly so, as he looks down at her dozing off against his chest. Stephanie waves him off, his steps careful as he strides out of the kitchen towards his quarters where Jane might actually get some sleep, for once. 

The scroll itself, spread out on the kitchen table beneath a bottle of syrup and a salt shaker, is in a language she herself can’t read. Thor assures her it invites both princes of Asgard and their shield mates to a ball in a week’s time. It says a portal can be provided, if they cannot enter Alfheim by themselves, and offers rooms in the palace for each of them in the guest wing. The ball will last a whopping three earth days, though Thor confides that’s a mere day and night in the time flow of Alheim. Stephanie supposes there’s no real way to get out of this, the unavoidable diplomacy of her unfortunate position. 

\--

The parties on Alfheim, it turns out, are much more like the iniquitous dens the Howling Commandos would visit on their 24 hour leave than the grand soirees of glittering Asgard. There’s ale strong enough to knock a supersoldier on her ass, pretty masked women-not-human with vast, beautiful curly twist-ups in shades of blue and violet, heaping piles of hearty food meant to be eaten in hand between dances. The music isn’t courtly, nor elegant: a pounding drum beat thrums through Stephanie’s veins as she watches the swirling crowds. 

One of the masked women hovers by her side uncertainly, a demure smile trembling purple underneath a silver domino. 

“Can I get you anything?” she asks, just barely loud enough to be heard over the revelers around them. “A drink?” She hesitates, reaching a hand out towards Stephanie’s shoulder. “A dance?” Stephanie blushes, never one managing to keep her cool around a beautiful woman, and whether it’s the ale or the vermillion lipstick on the woman, she finds herself accepting. 

“A dance,” she murmurs, leaning in, setting her cup down and letting the woman pull her closer. Somewhere, her teammates are sure to be noticing that she’s no longer just an observer of the revelry. But she can’t bring herself to care, because the woman smells good and her hands are soft on Stephanie’s hips, and there is nothing she can see preventing her from twining close. She once danced with a french woman, on the bank of the seine at an outdoor party held under black sheets strung through the trees. Her lipstick had been waxy on Stephanie’s neck, the violets and lilac of her perfume intoxicating and strong in the summer heat. This is something like that and yet nothing at all like that, so far removed from the giddy adrenaline, the uncertainty of their own mortality. 

True to the pattern that Stephanie never gets to finish a dance, Thor is at her side with his hand on her waist before she even gets up the courage to ask after the woman’s name, laughing loudly and bending between the two of them. 

“Amma begs your presence,” Thor says, a rumbling rasp. The woman in front of her steps back, bows, melts into the crowd before Stephanie can even reach out after her. 

These fucking _interrupting_ **men** , she thinks, squaring her shoulders and readjusting her clothing, a brilliantly gold dress Thor had brought her from Asgard. It reminded her of old woodcuts of the greek gods, wrapping and draping around her frame in a way that made her seem softer, in a way that dissolved some of the blood from her hands and the battle from her spine. It would do, for impressing a claimless goddess whose birth had been before the stars appeared. 

\--

Of course, nothing is ever as simple as Thor makes it out to be. This is something everyone should know about the man- he’s terrible at communicating how serious a situation is. 

Oh, this will be an easy one- just go to a party, show Amma that the Avengers are protecting earth, show Amma that the halls of Asgard are not divided. 

Well, Thor had never mentioned that Amma has a mean streak, a penchant for riddles, and an absolutely terrifying amount of heads. 

She greets them like the queen she is, and they bow before her, respectful. But Amma is no fool, no. Thor told them they were there to impress her, and a show is what she demands. 

“I would see your finest warrior,” Amma tells Thor, lifting one clawed hand, her nails a poisonous purple, her smile a hungry thing. “You have come to me, little prince, to show your muscles and your Midgardian tricks, and I am pleased, for many would be too cowardly to bare their face to me at all. But I know you are not the leader of your army, Thorling, who once I sang to sleep in my own halls. I have watched you since you were a babe, when your mother brought you to me for the blessing of the claimless times. You are strong,” she says, admits, the little hint of nostalgia in her all encompassing voice. “But you are not the one whose strength I wish to test.” Those eyes, the eyes that watched the heaven’s birth, are stones upon Stephanie’s skin. “The Captain Stephanie will weather my test.” 

Of course. 

Oh, it will be simple, Thor said. 

Facing down the serpent, watching it rear its head thirty yards high, as her team mates sit rigid like granite statues on the sidelines, Amma’s heads all turned towards her- oh, it will be simple. 

One of these days, Stephanie is going to have to explain the meaning of clear communication to her teammates. 

\--

She is covered in blood by the end of the battle, holding the severed head of a serpent aloft and staring, like charcoal burning, into the biggest of Amma’s eyes. Amma laughs low, she laughs long, she laughs like the shadows that follow lone pedestrians on dark city sidewalks. She is the thing behind them, the beast who dogs their footsteps, the thing they glance over their shoulders for. 

But Stephanie is the one who slays that beast, and she tries to control her heaving breath as Thor claps her on the shoulder, a proud look in his eyes. 

“Oh, sister,” he says, hard underneath his soft voice. “What Frigga would have done for a daughter like you.” 

Loki watches her from the sidelines of the amphitheatre, the vast arena in which Amma had set them to trial. His eyes, among the thousands that gleam at her in the darkness of this realm, find their target. A piercing arrow through her, the sharpest of pains in her diaphragm. He tilts his head, and the world slows down around her. The dust motes in the torchlight, and the thick wetness of green blood dripping down her wrists. A fist around her throat, choking her up. 

“So Asgard has a new queen,” Amma says finally, breaking the spell. Thor’s laughter fills the arena, among the shuddering, shivering murmur that ripples through the crowd. Stephanie thought their accent beautiful when she arrived- now it scrapes cold nails down her spine. She takes a deep breath.

“I am no queen,” Stephanie replies, throwing the head of the serpent down into the mud, the sickening iron and copper puddle that stains her boots, running through the dusty cobblestones beneath her. Amma tilts her head in the same unnerving way that Loki had, blinking all of her massive, deceptively dozy eyes. Her teeth gleam like fragile pearls as she smiles. 

“Child,” Amma rumbles, standing from her throne to tower over them all. “I have drunk the blood of Huginn and  Munin- I watched the Jormungandr receive its purpose from the seas, and I saw the realms know their first taste of life, so long ago. You are no queen, Stephanie Rogers, Daughter of Sarah, Captain of Men. You are no queen today.” She leans forward, one of her hands opening to drop an amulet in Stephanie’s bloodied hand. “But one day, you will be.” 

“Thank you for your blessing,” Thor replies, when Stephanie cannot find it in her to make any words in response. The amulet burns in her hands as her teammates spill over the barriers out onto the cobbled arena floor, their touch on her shoulders bringing her back. Loki slips it from her grasp as lightly as the first frost touches the crops, as gentle as the first twilight of autumn. Around her neck, it is cold metal and hot magic, and Stephanie does not know if these other realms will ever get easier to understand. 

When she looks back at Amma for the last time, walking back through the veil, back out into the party that still rages on outside her deathly coliseum, the goddess merely smiles and leans back in her throne, like a wolf awaiting a rabbit at the mouth of a crumbling warren. “Queens know one another,” she says without speaking, echoing in Stephanie’s ears, the reverberation of a giant’s heartbeat. “I will watch you rule, golden one.” 

\--

She does not sleep well that night. The echoes of the woman’s touch are confounding ripples on a pond, making waves between Amma’s words, and Loki’s gaze. When Stephanie finally rolls out of bed, at three in the morning, and goes to stand on the rooftop balcony, fog blankets the compound grounds. It is cold the way the woods of Azzano were, and damp the way the coast of France felt, sticking to her joints. A lack of sleep isn’t all that unfamiliar to Stephanie; war does not gift good dreams to its soldiers. But usually the horrors she sees are things that she knows. Like standing on the rift between continents and watching them separate beneath her feet, she sees the break between what she had known and the worlds that opened up for her the minute she accepted Thor into her heart. As soon as she had taken up her shield for him, she had been denied the cotton-headed ignorance of the realms that lay beyond that which she had been born into. 

When soft footsteps (a courtesy to her- she knows he can be silent when he wishes) fall behind her, she is not surprised. 

“I cannot help you dream if you refuse to sleep entirely,” Loki says lightly, his cold hand resting besides her on the railing. While normally she might laugh, let his attempt at lifting her do its work, she cannot seem to muster it. Simply her breath meets him, cold smoke in the night. 

“Do the battles get easier?” she asks, letting her shoulder break up against his taller frame. “Tell me, after millennia- does the sword ever get easier to lift? Or simply harder to put down?” That smile, the mask of snake oil he tries to wear, a carefree facade, melts away. “You and Thor, you fly into battle with reckless joy, but the shield gets harder to wield now that I don’t know who I wield it for.” 

“What you’ve done,” he starts, and stops. A cold finger trails down the side of her cheek, pushing her mussed hair behind her ear. Breath like winter on her shoulder, and an arm around her waist pulling her closer. She doesn’t fight it, just this once. (She’s tired of fighting, today.) “Today you passed a test, darling Captain. Amma wished to know whether Asgard still remains with swords and shields, or whether we might become the crumbling ruins of an age that is now past. She wished to know whether Midgard might find itself with champions that could withstand the other realms. We have not known peace- not now, and not ever. Amma knows this, with her memory that spans back before the realms even aligned. And now she knows that you are the strength upon which we build those defenses, for both our realms.” He sighs, chin resting on her head. She lets him, she lets him once again. “It does not get easier to fight. We only get further from the pain, the mortality that dogs us. And you too will only grow further from these things, the longer you walk in our realms.” 

“But will I ever know who I fight for,” she exhales, standing straighter, breaking from his hold. “I was not meant for things like this, Silvertongue. I grew up in a time when we did not even know that we could touch another planet, let alone find people who orbited around another star.” Loki laughs, hard and true, ringing like a bell in the night air. 

“Oh, Stephanie,” he says, his eyes agleam, on fire. “The one who Amma called golden in her own palace. You were meant for things like this before you were even born upon this Earth, and one day you will know that like you know your mother’s name.” Loki steps back, towards the elevator that leads down into the quarters. A single hand extended, beckoning her to his side. “But if you want to know who you fight for, and what realms they love, the seeds of their hometowns? I can show you that.” 

There have been few people who held their hands to her, and offered her enlightenment. Bucky offered her a future, and the truth of unconditional love. Peggy offered her adventure, and the aching, bitter taste of things that were not destined to be. Tony offered her a new beginning, and a family she could trust. Thor offered her companionship, and the clean slate she never got to have. 

Loki offers her meaning, so close she can almost taste it. The chance to know what lives she holds in her arms, in her rib cage, beating close to her heart and running through her veins. He offers her a truth from a mouth that was built to twist lies into shining, precious artifacts. 

Stephanie takes his hand. 

\--

That night, before she sleeps, Loki slips her through the crack in the realms and lets her feel the icy bite of his home world. They stand there for twenty minutes, breathing in the snow, the frost, the ache. 

“I will show you all the others,” he says, as he leads her back through the glow into the front yard of the compound, just as the sun kisses the edge of the sky good morning. “But everyone must start somewhere, and that is where I started, many lifetimes ago.” 

\--

The booming thud of the front door slamming open heralds the appearance of the warriors three and Stephanie’s personal favorite, Sif. 

“Let us drink!” Volstagg cries through the halls. 

“Let us feast!” Fandral follows. 

“Let us sleep,” Bucky mutters, curling further into his blanket on the couch. Stephanie simply laughs, setting her tablet back on the end table and going to greet them. She’d gotten better sleep this week, like grounding her feet on Jotunheim had brought peace back to her veins for a brief moment. Routine- waking, eating, training, sleeping- felt better than it had in months. Loki smirks at her every time she makes eye contact with him. But it’s lost a little bit of its edge, less likely to slice her open with a glancing blow. 

“We have brought to you a challenge,” Sif tells her, throwing a muscled arm around her shoulders. Peggy would have liked Sif. “The mead of poetry, retrieved by Fandral from the well of the ancient muses. Thor told us that we must celebrate you, for you’ve been acknowledged as the champion of Midgard by Amma the claimless.” 

“And so now, a champion’s brew,” Fandral chimes in, wiggling his charismatic eyebrows at her. Hogun grunts as he leans in, kissing both her cheeks before he passes her, dragging a bag of their extra clothing and supplies down the hallway towards the guest chambers. 

“I would be careful with that,” Loki says, appearing behind her like the thrice-damned cat-footed asshole he is. “We know what happened last time you brought out the mead of poetry, Sif.” Sif grimaces at him, but there is no malice in her tone when she claps his shoulder companionably and fires back. The comfortable swell beneath them will never quite return to the way it was when they were children, but at least it hurts Loki no longer to hear her voice. 

In Volstagg’s arms, the cask of golden mead sings a gentle song to her. 

Stephanie goes to get Thor’s flagons from the china cabinet. 

\--

Some day, Stephanie will learn that it’s just never a good idea to go along with literally any plan that involves drinking with Thor and the warriors three. 

It takes one sip of the mead for her judgement to go out the window in a caramel haze of tingling, magic-laced calm. 

On the edges of her vision, regret lurks like the spectre of every chance she did not take and every comrade she left behind. 

She takes the second sip.

\--

In the morning, Stephanie wakes to a crackle of electricity, and Thor’s booming voice as familiar arms yank her through her bedclothes onto cold, wet grass. 

“What the fuck-” she says, uncharacteristically brusque, and then it registers that she’s not in her bedroom. Thor stands over her, one hand still wrapped around her bicep, and the pounding feeling in her head, the smell of black peppertree in her nose-

“Never a dull moment,” he says cheerfully, his other hand reaching down to help her up onto her feet. She’s barefoot, still wearing the oversized MIT hoodie she’d stolen from Tony and a pair of Pietro’s running shorts. “I think the mead of poetry was a bit much, dear Stephanie, for you were much harder to wake this morning. That, I suspect, is why you did not hear the first explosion.” 

“First explosion?” she sputters, quick hands shoving her hair back out of her face. They’re definitely not anywhere she recognizes, at first glance. The cold grass is just the circle around them- a small clearing in a thick forest, with morning fog still clinging to its branches. She can’t see any explosions, nor anything that might cause them. 

“My darling Jane,” Thor sighs, though the fond look on his face betrays him. “Her experiments seem to have failed her yet again, for I awoke to a sizeable stone landing in our front garden, and the electricity of magic coursing through the entire compound. Jane managed to shut the machine off, but not before it transported through some small bifrost channel the majority of our team. In fact, I reached you just as the last portal was opening above you, and in my haste to keep you nearby, managed to enter it with you.” 

Oh god above, sometimes Stephanie wishes the scientists in her life would ask themselves the question- I can, but should I? 

“You could wait here, if you wish,” Thor says, nudging a fallen log up against the closest tree. “I will try and rise above the tree cover and see if I might discern where we are.” Aware of how bone-deep tired her muscles feel (hangovers are something she has not felt in a very long time), Stephanie nods and collapses against the bark. 

“I’ll try to watch for anyone, maybe a local if we’re near a village.” Thor nods, and with a swing of his hammer, he’s soaring away. Luckily, the forest isn’t too cold. She can comfortably sit in the shade in her clothing, leaning her head back and stretching out her legs. There is a dark, gaping emptiness in the back of her head. The kind of thing that beckons, drawing on the intrusive thoughts of men. The possibility of jumping, the probability of death. The memories of last night, waiting behind a barrier she can only assume is the mead’s bare pretense of kindness. If she does not push too hard, she won’t have to remember what must be an uncomfortable truth. Standing at the edge of the emptiness, Stephanie breathes in the smell of pine trees and sweet loam. 

A hand, eerily reminiscent of Loki, reaches out from the darkness and drags her in. 

When she opens her eyes, she can see through them the way she always has, but this time in memory. 

“The mead of poetry is special,” Sif says, as she watches Stephanie finish her second sip from the huge flagon Volstagg had poured. “Sometimes our warriors drink it to sing us songs of battles the children are too young to remember. Sometimes, Frigga would pour it for all the Valkyries and we would light each glass aflame to watch the smoke tell us of battles we might fight in the future. Odin gave one glass to every scribe before they wrote their chapter of our history in the great library.” 

“What story might you tell us, Stephanie?” Hogun asks, the first time he has spoken since his arrival. It’s on the tip of her tongue to refuse- there are no stories she wants to tell them, not with Bucky’s eyes on her and Tony resting beside her on the couch. Not with Loki’s gaze like cement around her ankles, nor Wanda’s curious smile. There are no battles she has fought that she wishes to bare before them all. 

“I saw Death, once,” Stephanie says, instead of keeping her mouth shut, the way she’d wanted to. Her words come propelled by golden ichor, the liquor of gods she cannot match. “He came for me, and asked me whether or not I deserved to follow him into the black.” Bucky leans back in his seat. 

She cannot breathe, she cannot stop, she cannot rest, she cannot lie. 

“But he did not take you,” Fandral says, the gleam of a man assessing jewels at a pawn shop in his smile. “Why did he not take you, Stephanie?”

“I did not deserve his peace,” she murmurs, taking a third sip of the mead. “It was a long time ago, in a field where he was dispensing mercy to the tortured.”

It was a long time ago, when she was young but not untried. Stephanie had gone ahead of the Howlies again, wading through freezing rivers and forests until she reached the barbed border of a town under siege. There was a reason why they called her the Front-Breaker, because she could pass through no man’s land like the breeze. For she was no man- she was no soldier, just the driving force of change hell-bent on breaking the lines on her general’s maps. The Howlies were waiting a mile away for the gunshots, the flare that let them know it was safe to move in. 

Stephanie wishes she didn’t remember how many men she threw down on that field, how many bullets she deflected into the veins of the sniper’s brothers in arms. And curse her memory, because she knows every life she’s ever taken like she knows the scars that never last on the backs of her hands. 

When the gunshots had ended, and she had sent up the flare for the Howlies, the bodies littered the ground. They were not all soldiers, and not all men. Not all uniforms, and not all evil. It was easy to demonize them until she was up close, and there was no illusion that might let her escape their very human souls. She had wondered, up until this moment, whether or not her soul was just as human as theirs, anymore. At the edge of the no man’s land lay bodies, days old. Villagers who had tried to run, and never made it past bullets which took and took and took, regardless of how heavy your heart might weigh in front of the jaws of the ancient crocodiles. Feathers strewn on the battlefield, waiting for Ammit to devour them all whole. In the land where the well of redemption ran dry- that is where Stephanie met Death.

“Stephanie,” Death said, a voice that crackled through her chest like leaves shuddering on the Paris pavement in fall. “Soldier of the sun, your blood is running cold.” 

It was in that moment that she looked down, and saw, with detached eyes, the bullet wound that ran straight through her stomach. 

“It is not your time,” they reassured her, the words of a thousand souls upon a thousand souls upon a thousand souls. “You are not the daughter of peace, Stephanie. You are the daughter of war, and he does not call you home just yet.” 

“Are you here for them?” she asked, the faint sound of the Howlies’ and their trucks, their motorcycles, reaching her ears. The clench of panic in her chest, travelling down to the bullet wound in her stomach. Death’s laughter felt like the shuddering, shrieking clash of a broken brake line, traveling through her veins. 

“They will not meet me for years to come,” Death says to her, waving a hand expansively as the lights of a hundred men come to rest in their cloak, like stars on the dark field of night. “Some of them will not meet me until you do. No, daughter, I am not here to take your soldiers. I am here to take these children home.” 

She does not remember exactly how Death left her (they must have wanted it that way), but-

“I remember your face,” Stephanie says, turning to Bucky with a loose, expansive grin. “I thought you were gonna shit yourself, oh my god, you fuckin’ lost it when you saw the bullet-hole in my gut.”

“Well,” Bucky says defensively, crossing his arms, knotting silver and flesh together. “It’s not my fault, most times a fella dies from that kind of wound, Stephie.” 

“So you know Death’s favor,” Thor booms, raising his glass. “May we all know Death’s favor for years to come.” 

Later that night, when she’s walking up the steps to her room, she can feel the skeletal hand of her former walking shadow there with her. It’s been years since she’s spoken about them. Loki interrupts her before Death can say hello- they kiss her cheek in greeting, and kiss the other farewell each time she speaks their name. 

“Whose favor do you not know?” Loki murmurs into her ear, slinking like a giant cat of prey until he can lean up against her windowsill. She closes her bedroom door behind her. “It seems that every time I hear more of your past, I learn of another whose blessing lies upon your vaulted crown. Are there any ancients who you do not charm?”

“You,” Stephanie says, offhand and jesting. She strips off her jacket, lays it across her desk chair, and Loki laughs. The mistake of youth, one she should know. Never turn your back to the ocean. 

“You truly think you do not know my favor?” Loki says, far closer to her than when she’d turned her cheek away. His presence hovers right behind her, but no hand lays upon her bones.  Not yet. “You think you do not have my words upon you?”

“There is much of me you do not know,” Stephanie says, unwilling to turn and face him. “You aren’t foolish enough to put stock in that which you cannot predict.” And is it the mead, the story she told, the secrets she’d bared- or is it him that brings an unfortunate fire to her chest?

“I know enough,” Loki murmurs, and then he rests one cool hand upon her cheek and draws her back, the force of his will more than anything bringing her towards him. “I have seen your heart, darling Captain. What lies do you think you could tell The Liar that he would not know already?” His hands may be cold upon her but his lips are warm against her jaw, and his words are like the touch of flame from a lighter, traveling just far enough from her skin that it shan’t burn her. 

“For someone who purports to tell lies, Silvertongue, you speak quite a few truths.” 

It is the mead; it is the moon; it is the time they have spent battling beside one another. It is the tension between them, and the tide of their companionship that sweeps away her lonely doubt for the briefest of moments. Just long enough for her to turn, grasp his hair in her fist and kiss him. He grows around her like mistletoe on an oak tree. The thief of trees and the thief of truth and the thief of her. 

“Why do you pour oil on fires you already know to be lit?” he asks her, setting his teeth in the pale flesh of her collarbone and drawing forth a helpless moan. 

“Why do I do anything?” Stephanie laughs. “Adrenaline junkie, these reckless bones my mother bore me with-”

“You have a death wish, and you  _ are _ my death wish,” Loki says, kissing her once more, his hands cupping her cheeks like he might, for one small moment, hold her whole world in between them. Like he might be her whole world for this brief time and space. 

“Stephanie,” Thor says-

Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie,  _ Stephanie- _ her eyes shoot open and she reaches for her shield, but Thor’s hand stops her. 

The memory, the moment- they are gone.

“Good news!” he says, beaming sunshine down at her. “We are not too far from civilization- in fact, I can see a small town some few miles away. If you would kindly let me hold you, I shall take us there, and we can phone Tony.” She takes his hand.

When the quinjet arrives, and Loki is aboard it, she does not ask the questions that flutter in her throat like the dying wings of a crane on the shores of the Nile. Ammit closes her jaw on another heart. 

Stephanie feels the weight of her lifetime upon her like a thousand leaden feathers.

\--

It turns out that the reason Jane’s equipment was malfunctioning is the giant stone that had landed on their lawn in the first place. Peter is geeking out over it even as Jane frowns beside him, tracing the markings as she rounds the massive boulder. 

“It’s a millstone,” Sif offers, patting it like an old dog. “We use them in Asgard to grind our grains. I don’t know how it ended up here, though.” 

“Perhaps you are closer to your discoveries than you thought!” Volstagg booms, patting Jane and Peter on their respective shoulders. Peter stumbles forward; Jane does not move. 

“Perhaps you’re all lucky that I’m rich,” Tony grumbles, but he’s just as eager as the rest of the science crew as he moves towards the mill stone with a sensor in hand. 

“Perhaps your world is more closely entwined with magic than I had previously thought,” Loki murmurs to Stephanie before he turns and stalks off back towards the house. 

Perhaps Stephanie wants to retire. 

\--

For a breath or two, Stephanie feels what it must be like to have peace. She was forged of war, born from the belly of a soldier’s widow, fighting from her first moment on this Earth. Dr. Erskine melted her bones and made them iron, and Peggy Carter helped her smith them into weapons she might use to seek out justice. She knows that along the way, she might have lost that meaning; the idea that after this war would come a time of detente that might let them all rest. But there is a month where they train, after the millstone, and it feels like the massive rock had hit the planet only to send shockwaves of quiet through the continental plates. Quiet, the likes of which she’s never known. 

Stephanie takes up new hobbies; she watches all of the Great British Bake Off, and tries to recreate a few things. Her mirror glaze cakes are excellent, but her pavlova needs some work. She burns through a pack of charcoal pencils sketching the other Avengers in their leisure time. She and Bucky watch Star Wars, and write belated fan mail to Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford. She finds the time to try and avoid Loki at all costs, and improves her stealth skills quite a bit. She and Clint also step up their Nerf war with Darcy, leading to a few more broken vases than last month. After the third vase, Stephanie finally understands why Tony says that grovelling to Pepper is an art form they must all perfect. 

But peace was not what Stephanie Rogers was born for, and the balance of the forces must know that, for just as she starts to get antsy with the relative quiet, the fire giants arrive. 

\--

“How does this keep happening to you?” Sam asks her, finally having come home from his visit with his mother. “I leave you for so little time, and look what you’ve done.” 

“Pal,” Bucky says, leaning around Stephanie to make an exasperated face at Sam. “Tell me about it. 

\--

While she is pounding the blacksmith’s hammer in the ungodly heat of Muspelheim, with Thor’s encouragement at her back, with Sam’s worried eyes, with Bucky’s hand on her shoulder, she wonders whether this is what made the warriors three decide to roam the realms. 

“You are the champion we looked for,” the fire giant had said. 

“You are our champion,” Thor had told her. 

“You can make a real difference in their lives, without the tangled web of politics that you hate so much on Earth,” Sam murmured, his thumb so gentle on her chin as he looked at her with his warm eyes. 

“What are you, gonna back down from a challenge?” Bucky snorted. “How soon can we pack, let’s go!” 

Perhaps Frigga and Thor were right. 

Magic might suit her. 

\--

But the battles of Edda, this phase in which she cannot throw a stone without hitting a magical item, cannot last forever. Above all, Stephanie is a champion on Earth, and Earth knows its struggles very well. 

Peter calls her on a Thursday afternoon, his voice high pitched and shaky. 

“Stephie,” he says, a great clattering noise coming over the line. “I need help.” His piteous, pained tone gives way to the bone-chilling screech of subway cars mis-aligning, crashing, and all of a sudden Stephanie can’t hear anything on his end but rough, ragged breathing. 

“Peter-” she shouts into the phone, already slamming the button on the wall intercom to tell everyone to Assemble. “Peter, Pete, c’mon buddy-”

“Doom is back,” Peter says, and then the line goes dead. 

It doesn’t take them that long to get to New York. By the time they make it there, though, Dr. Doom has already set up shop. The portals open around them in a whirlwind, and no matter who she fights, or how hard she does it, it is impossible to escape them all. 

She does not see any of her soldiers when one finally takes her. She does not see anything at all. 

\--

She wakes to a frigid cold surrounding her, a prison of stone, and a familiar face. Loki. The bitter feeling of being the damsel in distress once more courses through her as she recalls another time she woke this way- after the dragon. 

“There you are, Captain,” he says, surveying her through hooded eyes from the other side of the cell. “I was beginning to wonder if your revert form was a comatose halfling.” She pulls herself upright, leaning back against the wall and wrapping her arms around herself, trying to get her bearings and comprehend what he’s just said. Which is, of course, when she notices what he’s referencing- her arms are devoid of the muscle she’s accustomed to, her legs thin and shorter than before, her stomach concave and her rib cage feels curiously fragile. She draws in a rattling breath- ah, that bubbling feeling in her lungs she thought she’d left behind over half a century ago. 

She’s Stephanie Rogers, young army hopeful, once more. And, it seems, Loki is similarly affected. His skin is blue, runed, and his eyes glint blood red at her as he tilts his head to the side and sighs, frost escaping his mouth. 

“Is your communicator still sending out a beacon?” he asks her, his voice rasping slightly, his hands clenching slightly in the fabric of the tattered green cloak that surrounds him. 

“Of course,” she tells him, which is mostly the truth. FRIDAY must know that she went into a portal Doom had opened, but she’s not altogether certain who of the Avengers had been behind her to see which particular portal she’d been sucked through. He doesn’t question her though. She has no way of knowing how much longer he’s been here than her, nor how long she’d been here before she woke. Perhaps it’s been long enough that he’s willing to accept her optimism. “And does anyone know you’re here?”

“Who would care enough to keep tabs on my well being? I don’t carry FRIDAY’s beacons. I was alone in the battle when one of the portals took me,” he snorts, rolling his head to one side and bracing his hands against the stone, standing up and stretching. His joints do not pop, instead cracking like the river in spring when the ice melt has come. It’s a spine-tingling sound, and it makes her shiver. She knows enough not to answer that question. She knows enough of Loki and of Thor, of what she’s learned over the past few years, to know that it would not be wise to let him hear that she knows about the program hidden deep in FRIDAY’s circuitry that does just that. 

She knows enough to know that the program could not be infallible- hopes that if he was in this state alarms had been sounded, even just a blip on Thor’s radar. (Thor, the ever-hopeful brother, the pushed-so-far, the finally forgiving.)

“Have there been any guards?” she asks next, watching him pace from one end of the cell to another. There isn’t much room, really. It’s ten feet by ten feet at most, an unnaturally perfect square. The door seems solid, but she doesn’t think it really is. She thinks it’s more like magic, opaque and shimmering slightly when she looks at it from the corner of her eye. (She wonders if there is someone on the other side, watching them in their pacing ire.)

“Nothing for the who knows how long since I’ve been thrown in here,” he tells her, his fingers tapping strange, almost chiming sounds on the solid stone of the walls. “You are the first being I’ve seen in that time.” 

“And imagine that,” she says, laughing humorlessly, letting her head rest back on the wall, looking up at him. “Your death wish, you said?” He turns to look at her, the briefest of amusements flashing across his face. 

“Imagine that,” he stills, sliding back down the wall into a less than graceful slump once more. “Captain Cannot-Tell-A-Lie, thrown in a cell with Loki Liesmith.” He cocks his head at her when she shudders hard enough to make her teeth chatter. “Do I repulse you that much?” he says, raising an eyebrow, taking her involuntary movement for one of disgust. He is a fool, she thinks. After stealing kisses from her in the hallways and meeting her soft eyes across the kitchen table- after watching her on the battlefield and in the fires of Muspelheim, in the shadows of Alfheim. That he could think this of her. He is on edge, here, exposed for his true form, but that does not excuse his sharpness. 

“I’m cold,” she says softly. letting her forehead fall forth to rest upon her knees as she draws up tighter. the shivers wracking her body for a brief moment and then subsiding. It’s a nightmare, honestly, now that she’s assessed her surroundings and the cold is starting to get into her bones. Nothing like icy cold to literally freeze her up, bringing back every three am dream she’d shaken awake with, falling under layers of ice and letting go of yet another century, yet another life, yet another family. When she looks up, his jaw is grit and his eyes are hard. 

He knows exactly what she’s thinking of. They’re both creatures betrayed by the cold, and Loki knows it. A cold took away their family before- took away their throne, their battles, their weapons, their minds. He knows exactly what they have in common, and it doesn’t make this situation any easier, with one of them freezing the other and neither of them with any power to stop it from happening. 

He stands once more, unfastening the cloak from his shoulders, stripping the tunic from his body. 

“Here, take these,” he tells her. She shakes her head, biting back another shuddering wave of cold. 

“I don’t need them,” she tells him, unfortunately aware of the fact that he must know it’s a lie. “I’m fine.” 

“Are you?” he asks tiredly, his eyes sweeping over her, garnets glowing in the low light of the cursed box they’re in. “You’re shivering enough to shake the stones, darling Captain.” The nickname, a token of spar after spar, his tongue quick to mock her with endearments as she grappled with his tricks time and time again in battle and in training, spills out of his mouth without a thought. It should stop them both in their tracks, a remnant of a time when they had been on two separate sides of one moral line, rather than gray scale nothings wavering in the ambiguity of the Avengers’ treaty with Loki. 

It does not. 

Here, in the silence of their shared cell, his clothing dangling from his blue fingers and his aid outstretched towards her, all the sting of his past mockery has drained from the words. The lack of a sting, the absence of bitterness, is what spurs her past her own unwillingness. She nods in acceptance. 

“Stand, Stephanie,” he says, beckoning her with graceful fingers. She feels the stubbornness rise again in her stomach at his demanding tone- why should she? But she has already accepted his aid, and she’s not so foolish as to fight that. She tries, her muscles locking, her wrists aching when she braces herself against the floor. There it is, the old rheumatic burn that had once plagued her in the cold New York winters. It takes longer than Loki can stand, it seems, because he’s there beside her before she can get all the way up, his hands hooking under her biceps and pulling her upright, steadying her when she sways. She hadn’t realized how much shorter she was like this, but faced by the towering form of the man before her, it was clear. And, looking up into his eyes warily, it was painfully obvious that he had not been expecting exactly how frail she really was like this. “You have bested me in battle,” he mutters, bending down more than a foot to sweep the tunic over her head, “And your true form is fairly made of balsa wood.” 

She wants to snap at him- what does he know of weakness? He has never been less than a god, no matter what family feud he had been stirring, no matter what heritage he had been rejecting. 

The tunic reaches to her knees, swamping her in thick forest green fabric with glinting threads of gold sparkling at the cuffs. His hands sweep up beneath it for a ticklish second, her hips shying away from their grasp, but he’s only sweeping her belt off with dexterous fingers and using it to pull the tunic in tighter around her waist. She must look ridiculous, baggy uniform far too big on her now and hanging from beneath a man’s tunic, belted by bright and obnoxious red. The view is only humorous for a moment, before Loki has pulled the cloak around her as well. 

“They will come for you soon,” he says, as he steps back away from her, his chest bare and shining dully in the dimness surrounding them, his runes evident to her for the first time. “Then, you can return my clothing to me, Captain.” 

“Thank you,” she says, after a moment, when the shivers have subsided once more. Miraculously, she can feel the cloak and tunic trapping her body heat already. 

“I am many things, most of them unsavory,” he tells her, sitting back against the wall once more. “But I’m not so blinded by rage anymore that I would allow myself to be the one to deliver you back to them an icicle. I cannot look at you and separate the darling Captain from the woman who holds my favor. We passed the times of sparring in battle long ago, Stephanie.” 

The hours pass so slowly Stephanie feels like perhaps time itself has been frozen by the Jotunn across from her. He doesn’t speak until she’s warmed enough that her muscles are no longer clenching desperately to create some sort of heat. And when he does it isn’t towards her at all. He mutters words she doesn’t quite catch in languages she does not know, and she can see cold sparks flicker across his fingers. They make the room even colder. It must be magic, some sort of Jotunn spells that he had had the courtesy to keep contained until she was warm enough that they wouldn’t send her spiraling even further into hypothermia. 

Once or twice, she thinks she hears something shuffle beyond their prison walls. The door seems like it flickers nearly translucent at some point, but when she looks fully towards it to ascertain what the shapes beyond it are, it’s opaque yet again. 

When the crashes and the shouting, the explosions and the chaos, begin, growing loud enough to penetrate their cell walls, she knows backup has arrived. 

When the door finally crashes open (or dissolves, rather), it must be a nearly comical sight- she’s feeling giddy and exhausted enough that she might have giggled just a little when Thor had burst through the door, the magic dissipating, and stopped short upon the image of the two of them. 

Loki is slumped up against the edge of the wall, exhausted from the magic in the walls sapping at the both of them, reverted back to his Jotunn form by the enchantment made upon the doorway of their prison. She is mere feet away from him, her head rested on her knobbly pre-serum knees, and the two of them are quietly, companionably sharing stories of the various adventures their travels have taken them on. They make quite a pair, sat side by side.  The noble Captain America, huddled in the mass of ridiculous looking fabric swaddling her form, all gangling limbs and hollowed cheeks, a child of the Depression once more: and the powerful Loki Liesmith, unable to even hold the barest of illusions that normally kept his Aesir form constant. 

“Brother?” Thor asks, confusions evident upon his face. “Stephanie?” 

“Finally,” Loki heaves a sigh. He doesn’t answer Thor’s queries as to why he’s here, simply waving a hand dismissively. “The good Captain needs some assistance, Thor.” 

And he sweeps on out, leaving Thor to reach down and sweep her up in his (now, much larger seeming) arms. Her hip is injured, and her cheek is bleeding, but she does not notice that until Thor brings her beyond the walls of the prison and she is Captain America once more on the outside. The belt feels tight. The cloak feels right. 

She follows Loki into battle. 

“We searched for you everywhere,” Thor tells her, in between swings of his hammer and sweeps of her shield. “But FRIDAY could not find you until we managed to corner Doom and get him to reveal the source of his portals.” 

“Neither of us could feel the outside,” Stephanie slams another minion to the ground. “The time felt different in there- hours passed, but here it’s only been two at most.” 

“He has a ritual going,” Thor answers. “Doom has tapped into something I am not sure we can save him from, forces that even the Queen Hel might not be able to break. His life force is tied to these dimensions, places of his own creation, though I know not where he might have found the altar upon which he stands.”

“Your world has gotten too close to mine,” the blood spills on the floor as Stephanie knocks another soldier to the ground. She can hear the chanting and feel the hot buzz of magic. They’re close to Doom by now. “That’s how he found it.”

“Oh, my dear shield sister,” Thor laughs. They stand on the threshold of Doom’s vast throne room, where the brilliant light of a spell unchecked permeates every dank, shadowy corner. “Your world  _ is _ my world.” He puts a hand on her wrist to stop her from stepping any further into the room. Their comrades cannot break through the barrier that surrounds Doom like a glowing bubble, a pearl of forces untold. Even at this distance, Stephanie can feel how strong it is. At the edges of the room, each of their team mates tries to struggle forward. 

Underneath Doom’s feet lies an altar inscribed in runes, the kind Stephanie saw so many times on Asgard. From his open veins, a line of light runs through him. The altar is draining him, and it will take no other price than blood. 

“He’s killing himself,” she says, almost without thinking, and Thor nods heavily. 

“The magic of the nine realms is not for men like him.” 

That’s when they see Loki striding calmly across the room, his knife in hand, ready to slit his own wrist open, and Thor steps forward involuntarily, and she does too, and then-

Silvertongue reaches out a hand and grasps the magic of the nine realms in his bloodied hand. 

For the first time, Stephanie’s memory fails her. Perhaps the shock of the day, or the magic, or her deep weariness does it. It’s unlike her to forget- it’s nearly impossible for her to forget, so why does she not remember how this ends? Loki slashes the silver knife across his wrist and reaches for the light, and then- she knows something happens. A voice booms out through the chamber, but it is more than a voice. It is many, it is three, it is all of them. The lightning crackles and the taste of ozone follows, thunder crashing about the castle, in the very room. 

“You would pay this price, Silvertongue?” the voice asks, and Loki looks the light straight in the eyes, the eyes, there are so many eyes-

“I would pay this price for the Queen,” he replies, as calm and steady as she has ever heard him. 

“She is not the Queen yet, little liesmith,” the voice says, this pondering tone, but Loki nods nonetheless.

“She is my Queen,” he says, and then-

Stephanie blinks. She does not remember. Why does Loki hold the light?

“You have paid your penance, Silvertongue,” the voice booms through, rattling the stones. “May all your bonds be set free.”

She does not remember what penance Loki must pay.

She does not remember anything at all.

\--

When the light finally fades and Stephanie can think once more, Thor’s eyes are the sky above a Californian beach. 

“The Norns have cleared his debt,” he says, as Tony and Natasha rush forward to try and tourniquet the still bleeding Doctor Doom. “Loki has been freed.”

Stephanie does not choose to think about why her stomach drops. Instead, she pulls a roll of gauze from her uniform pocket, and she grimly follows Thor towards their teammates and their bleeding enemy. 

\--

Loki finds her after everything has been said and done, and she is waiting by the jet for them to all leave. 

“I have been freed,” he tells her, lighter than she has ever seen him. 

“I heard their verdict,” she replies, tight like rubber bands on ice, tight and iron in her chest. 

“And so I shall leave,” Loki says. The quiet between them stretches, a vast, engulfing chasm. It hurts her down to her bones, but she does not know why. If he leaves, he may come back. If he stays, he may yet leave. There is no clear answer, not when it comes to Loki. 

“That was never my true form,” she says after the moment of silence, deliberately avoiding looking his way, his presence heavy beside her. “You said it was my true form, but it wasn’t.” 

“Was it not? Was it not the form you had before they changed you, Stephanie Rogers?” 

“You know  _ nothing _ of true forms, Loki,” Stephanie says, turning towards him, her voice growing bolder when he doesn’t even flinch at the implication of his ignorance, instead watching her with fathomless eyes. “A true form is nothing more and nothing less than what’s in  _ here _ .” Her careful hand pressed against her own chest, her heart beating warm and strong beneath it. “And my true form can’t be changed by any _ one _ , nor any _ thing _ . It has no bearing on the vessel that contains it.” He reaches out, touches a limp and tangled blonde curl with a gentle movement, letting it wrap around his index finger like tarnished gold. 

“Perhaps they less changed you than set you free,” he murmurs, his thumb grazing the edge of her bruised cheekbone. His eyes flicker upwards, towards the team she knows is approaching. For all that she wishes he might not let their presence break between the two of them and this fragile understanding they have barely realized, she knows that he will not stay the moment they get close enough to hear anything he might say, or decipher any movement he might make. His grin is made of quicksilver and slips between them just as smoothly as he steps back, letting her hair fall back against her jaw and straightening to his full height, now barely over half a foot taller than she. 

“I may not be there to catch you any longer. Mind the gap next time, darling Captain,” he breathes, just as the crunching footsteps of the rest of the Avengers reach her ears. It’s almost like concern for her wellbeing. If she didn’t know better than to trust his words at face value, it might be just that. But there’s something else beneath it, some sort of bitterness at a moment broken, some sort of curiosity, some sort of promise, something more unsaid than voiced and trapped beneath the man’s deflection, never to be unearthed. If he leaves now, as he said he would, she may never know what it is. Stephanie takes a breath, she tries to force the words from her mouth. 

And then, with nothing more than a dull flash of green energy, Loki is gone. 

“Hey Cap, your cheek healed up already. No marks or anything,” Tony says, a little bit of envy in his voice, when she turns to face them. Her grin is less than genuine, but she plasters it on nonetheless. 

“Super soldier perks, Stark,” she says as she climbs the steps up into the quinjet, limping only slightly from the ache in her hip. She doesn’t look towards Thor, who must know that not even the serum would have healed it that quickly, leaving no mark behind. She doesn’t look towards Thor, who must know the only thing that  _ could _ have healed it like that. 

She doesn’t think about anything at all. 


	4. The Mortality of Warriors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki searches for something that might make him worthy of her, and Stephanie searches for her place in the cosmos. The cosmos makes its own decisions about both of these things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy it's been a while, hasn't it? Writer's block is a bitch and a half.

Her dreams are colder now. His presence, it seems, is more perceptible in its absence than it ever was before, like the hollow space has become a black hole, sucking the color from her sleep. It’s peaceful, in a way. If there’s one thing that heralds Loki, to Stephanie, it’s his constant state of entropy. Barely controlled chaos raging, the tip of his finger bringing scales sliding catastrophically. Thor is content with the outcome. She knows he would rather have Loki by his side, but a freed Loki is a happier Loki by any measure. 

“He withers in a cage,” Thor says, sitting on the balcony with her and sipping tea one early morning when neither of them can sleep. “Though I wonder yet whether there are cages that might benefit him instead.” She tries to pretend she does not know what he means. 

“You cannot keep a thing like him in mortal confines,” Stephanie takes a deep drink from her chamomile. The early sunshine is gilding the edge of the field, the still smoking wreckage of a bot that Peter had destroyed, the bits of a giant chess set that Clint is trying (and failing) to carve. “Surely you know this better than anyone else, Thor.” 

“I do,” he rests one hand on her shoulder, his arm a comforting band. Thor can be a golden top, spinning wildly out of control, but he can also be the inevitability and calmness of an hourglass, the tick of a clock, the drip of a river into the sea. For that, Stephanie appreciates him. Like no other warrior in their group, even Bucky, Thor understands the way the future can stretch out ahead of you. Faced with the prospect of functional immortality, with the concept that she is not aging, with the realities of the world continuing, Thor is a rock. Someone who might be there when she meets Death once more. “But Stephanie, do not take lightly the fact that even the most wild of birds has a ribcage it considers home.” 

They both know what he is saying. 

“The paths may yet converge,” she says, after a long moment of silence, the heavy weight of his commiseration like a blanket upon her heart. He simply smiles, and together they watch the sunrise, the faintest sounds of their teammates waking echoing behind them. 

\--

Bucky notices as well, the way her vision tracks things no longer there. She expects him to be behind her, beside her. That things she’s put down won’t be where she left them, or that her room will be rearranged. 

“You’re absent-minded lately, golden girl,” he says to her, lounging on her bed as she rifles through files to find a dossier on Zola she wanted to review. She shoots a glare at him, before finally locating it, exactly where she’d left it in her filing cabinet. Loki usually put things back in reverse of her system. But there’s no one there to do that, now. It’s not like Bucky has the desire or energy to so thoroughly turn her life upside down. He’s the one who organized her things in the first place, after all. 

“There’s a lot going on, right now,” she says, like there isn’t always something happening, like she hasn’t been fighting a war for twenty years, like the world stopped arguing when she was in the ice. He doesn’t buy it, and nor should he. Bucky has rarely indulged her lies on the subject of emotion. That’s part of why he’s still around, she thinks. It’s somewhat like being back in their apartment in Brooklyn when he hooks his ankle around her knee and brings her toppling down on his chest, latching on to her as though he might never let go. He would have been gentler, then, perhaps. But not by much. She lets him hold her, the way he might have long ago. Back when they could pretend their friendship was enough to bind them together for a lifetime. When they would have married of convenience, simply to have someone safe to call home. Times have changed for the better, in that way, at least. 

“There will be other battles,” he murmurs into her hair, something Wanda has been calling a “messy top bun”, or whatever. Golden tendrils in a nest upon her head as she rests her cheek on his collarbone. He used to say that to her, when she was small. When someone she’d argued with didn’t change their mind, or her fists couldn’t persuade them. When they lost a friend to something, or a girl (or boy) disrespected Bucky. For some reason, though, now it just brings tears to her eyes. 

“And if I don’t want there to be?” she asks him, through the ache in her throat, the pin pricks in her nose. 

“Don’t get all soft on me now, Rogers,” Bucky shifts, and lowers his arms to wrap around her waist. “We can’t stop fighting, just because you’ve gone moon-eyed over someone.” 

“Have I ever stopped fighting?” Stephanie presses the edge of her teeth against his skin, begs his warmth to swallow her whole and give her peace. She wants to sleep, and sleep, and when she wakes she will find herself free of the heaviness that comes with wanting to taste that peppermint sting of Loki’s magic again.  Loathe as she is to admit it, even in the relative safety of her own mind, she does miss him. She misses him, and it burns because she shouldn’t. 

“Put it this way, stubborn one,” Bucky says, long suffering but never impatient with her and her hypertrophic heart. “If you didn’t stop fighting for Peggy, you shouldn’t stop fighting for anyone. Because let’s face it, we’re not gonna find someone that good again.” She snorts, his metal fingers mussing her messy bun even further. “And I’m gonna be real with you, sweet thing. He ain’t worth it.”

The sad thing is that half of her agrees. (The  _ really _ sad thing is that the other half wishes he would prove it, so she could exorcise this infatuation from her soul.)

-

Somewhere, out in the cold, Loki is trying to prove something else. 

The mountains of the East are something like his home, his ancestral home. Jotunheim is cold and unforgiving, but there is a beauty in each water crystal that assaults his blue skin. Why the shield might be here, he does not know. He only knows that he has a sword, and he wants a woman, and he needs six more pieces of this shield before she will be his. 

Underneath the craggy tops of these mountains, waiting for a spring never coming, a sun that never melts them, is a cave. He finds it on the fourth day, after trailing evergreens and fluffed winter birds towards the relative shelter the rock provides. The fount inside the cave flows, despite the sub-zero temperatures.  It burbles, joyously, in such a way that Loki might expect seasonal warmth to reach out to him. When he touches his hand to the water, though, it is so cold it burns even his skin. 

_ Have you come for the shield? Have you come for the shield? Have you come- _

_ for- _

**the shield?**

“What must I do to win this heart?” Loki asks of the ice, in his mother tongue, the coldest words he knows. The fount laughs, and the water splashes upon his face, an unforgiving slap. 

_ Have you come for the shield? _ it asks him again, waiting, patient as it can be with his slow understanding. 

“I’ve come to make her whole again,” he says, and the cracking of ice reverberates around the cave with deafening power. 

_ You may have her bones _ , the water whispers.  _ You may make her whole again. _

A raven watches him from the tallest tree outside the cave when he emerges with the glimmering metal stowed well away in his pack, but Loki does not notice- he was never good enough at sensing his father’s presence. The bird blinks, once, twice, thrice. Loki makes his way back down the mountain, and Huginn flies towards the rising sun, barely noticeable on the horizon. 

_ They say the Silvertongue has regrown his heart _ , his feathers whisper in Odin’s ear.  _ They say he is building her a dowry of metal and ice.  _

\--

When April comes, Frigga calls upon her for the first time. It’s not unexpected. She is a shield sister of Asgard, after all. 

“Do you want me to come with you?” Bucky asks her, hovering in the doorway like he used to when she’d get asked on pity-filled dates by the nice boys from church. She finishes lacing up her boots and shoulders her pack. Natasha hovers behind him, another layer of protection against what she knows her teammates still regard warily. What a concept, that the oldest of them all (besides, of course, their Asgardian teammate) would adapt the quickest to the world of magic. 

“I think I’m old enough to go to tea without a chaperone,” Stephanie says drily, but she kisses his cheek as she passes him and bends to kiss Natasha’s as well. When Heimdall retrieves her in that glorious burst of rainbow light, she barely shakes at all. Frigga is there to greet her, ever gracious and luminous as always. 

“For once,” she says, as Stephanie shakes the ringing of bells and the expansiveness of the universe from her skull, “a child of mine comes when called.” Stephanie laughs helplessly, and when Frigga enfolds her in her arms, it is more like being hugged by her mother than she can remember. The ice took her parents and time took her memories and sure, she still remembers a lot, but there is a distinct difference between the cold memories that are installed categorically in her now-perfect brain and actually being held in a mother’s arms. “Shall we have tea?” Frigga asks her, and it’s not work at all to say yes. 

The garden in which her ladies bring them tea is beautiful, a Monet painting brought to life. The water lilies gleam pearlescent in the afternoon sunshine, and the water sparkles more clearly than any Bahamian beach. (Tony claimed it wasn’t possible, and even brought the team there to prove it, but all Stephanie saw was quickly fading sunburns and drinks served in coconuts. They were, admittedly, delicious. But they didn’t prove a thing about water clarity.) The delicacy with this the golden spires gleam in the distance is more than she can take, her fingers twitching for a sketchbook. It’s been too long. And the flowers smell as sweet as she remembers, from Thor’s wedding. 

“The palace is quite quiet without any sons to cause me trouble,” Frigga says, handing Stephanie a cup of tea and a plate of some small sugared cakes. “Sometimes I wished for daughters, to weave my seidr and keep me company.” 

“They would have been as chaotic as your sons,” Stephanie says, and Frigga only laughs. 

“You catch on, dear Captain.” It’s almost painful how quickly she jerks at the endearment, close enough but not quite there. An artifact, from the original source, for surely Loki had picked it up from his mother. The turns of phrase of our parents find themselves new lives, new faces on our tongues, but we are not freed from the ways in which they draw us back, to weave us within the tapestry of our ancestral continuation. “But of my sons,” Frigga says, after a few moments of peace between them. “They survive well enough in your care?” 

“Ah,” Stephanie laughs, setting her cup down. “You want the report? Thor is well enough, happy with Jane and quite attached to our youngest member. He takes it upon himself to look after Peter.” 

“Always the older brother,” Frigga sighs. “And Loki?” 

“You know he is no longer with us in the base,” Stephanie turns, to look towards the water, and not at Frigga’s face. She can’t quite bear the furrowed brow, the not-disappointment. Her eyes, like her younger son’s, see more than Stephanie wants them to. “I’m not sure where he’s gone now. I haven’t heard from him since he was set free.” 

“I hear enough,” Frigga lays her hand on Stephanie’s, and like an inexorable magnet, she can’t help but be drawn back to look at the Vanir. “I hear enough to know he’s searching your world for something that my people left there long ago.” 

“Not a weapon, I hope,” she smiles wryly. “Tony would throw a fit.” Frigga just laughs, squeezing Stephanie’s fingers, and taking another sip of her tea. 

“A shield, dear Captain,” her eyes glimmer, something in them Stephanie does not wish to parse. “I’m sure you are familiar.” 

“Maybe so.” She turns back towards the water again. It is shaky ground here, and she knows not what exactly Frigga is trying to say. “But you must have called me here for something more than gossip, Lady Frigga.” Her laugh is like bells as she stands, golden cloth glimmering around her. 

“I cannot wish for a simple tea with a daughter of my shield? No, you’re right,” she turns towards the palace, and gestures for one of her ladies to come gather their tea. “I have a book to pass to you, from another queen of the nine realms. She insisted I deliver it personally, and I wished to verify its safety before handing it off.” 

The book is thick, set in gold, an illuminated manuscript the likes of which Stephanie had seen only in articles and museums. The words flicker before her eyes when she opens to a page, somewhere in the middle of the book, before they solidify into rather outdated english (even for her.) 

“Can you read it?” Frigga asks, peering over her shoulder much the way her younger son might. He had to have learned it somewhere, Stephanie supposes. “I had endeavored to enchant it with Allspeak, a kind that might work for you, but obviously there aren’t many Midgardians around here to test that on.” 

“I can read it just fine,” Stephanie says, her finger tracing the edge of the page gently. The paper is thick, fine, almost like cardstock, and the gold leaf beneath her fingertip gleams in the sunlight. “I’m just not sure why it’s for me.” The words are english, they are her language, but the page speaks of weaving the roots of the world-tree. Bind them, it tells her. You must bind them, or the worlds will come apart. They draw ever farther from each other, the longer the millennia stretch on past us. Stephanie looks back at Frigga, but her eyes are shuttered, now, and her jaw set tight beneath the golden skin. 

“You will know, when the time comes,” she reaches out, a trembling hand pushing a loose strand of Stephanie’s hair back behind her ear. “They always do.” 

It is the face of a mother who has sent all her children off to war- and the face of a mother who fought her own wars before them. She knows the bloods of battle, and the bones they leave behind- the fires set in vengeance and in victory. For all Stephanie has come to know the bitter taste that harsh reality carries, she could not reach the foresight of Frigga in a thousand years. Thor had mentioned, once, his mother’s gifts. That the Vanir possess more sei∂r than any Aesir might grasp towards. But he had also mentioned his mother’s leaden tongue- that she, unlike Loki, preferred to keep her secrets like stones in her belly. They would not slip out like silvered lies, but rather remain silent in her bones until the day she was laid to rest. So Frigga looks at her, fierce and devoted companion of her eldest son, and- unformed, tenuous tie to her rebellious youngest. She sees another child she must let the universe take from her, only to beg at its starry feet that they might be returned one day. The sun blinds Stephanie for a moment, as she looks away and breaks their gaze, searching for excuses outside in the light of day. A flash of white across her vision. Frigga turns from her, gathering part of her skirt in her hand and gesturing to one of her waiting ladies. 

“Gather Stephanie a satchel that she may take the book back in, will you? It is heavy, and I prefer she not lose it in the grasp of the Bifrost.” 

Frigga feeds her once more before letting her go back to Earth- a true mother, through and through. They walk the gardens in silence for a while, and Stephanie feels the ache of loss in her chest at the way Frigga gently turns the leaves from the path, guiding a vine or two back towards its trellis. The flowers seem to reach for her with every step. The sunlight and the shadows seem to part and leave nothing but bare galaxies for her to walk upon. It makes Stephanie miss her own mother- Sarah had left her long ago, and even longer if she counted the years she was dead to her world and its problems. But the curse of half-remembered moments meant that she could not quite reach back far enough to remember the way her mother used to sing to the dishes in the kitchen, or the clothes in the wash tub. Sarah was not a weak woman, but she could still be a soft woman- god, didn’t it burn Stephanie up, to know that even after eighty years of waiting the world still treated those like synonyms. 

When Heimdall turns the sword in the stone, and lets Stephanie return home, Frigga turns from her and does not watch her go. And she understands. To live thousands of years, she supposes, means to live thousands of losses. 

Thor waits for her on the other end, and grasps her shoulder gently in his hand as he turns her towards the base. 

“Everyone behaved?” she asks him, and he laughs.

“Stephanie,” Thor squeezes her shoulder. “Would it have truly been us, the same shield-brothers you love so much, if we had?”

A valid point. 

\--

He is cold, he is cold, but Loki Silvertongue knows the cold and he can make it his. The snow bites at his skin without ever finding purchase, and the wind tries to slip between his bones without ever finding passage. He has waited here at the top of this mountain, where only the most intrepid of the Midgardians attempt a summit, for seven days. They do not see him, and he does not see them. Perhaps it is the wrong season. The storm is blowing fiercely, and the air is thin as it is in the deepest pits of Muspelheim, so he would not be surprised if their fragility exceeds their will to be here, on the top of their world. 

There are no animals, no plants, no life. Rocks and ice and below him, the bodies of the unsuccessful lie frozen. It stings at his heart, distant and painful, to see them without graves. Like a battle he had seen long ago, where in Svartalfheim the dead were so numerous the graves could not be dug fast enough. Thor had cried on his shoulder when the blades stopped clanging, stopped crashing into one another. His tears like a healing fount upon Loki’s skin, opened up his own eyes- he had cried too, into the tattered cape his brother wore. It was the worst thing metal and magic had ever done. The worst thing the brothers had ever seen. 

Now he is old enough, and Thor is too, that they have seen far worse. But still. They thaw him somewhere inside his ribcage as he waits for the mountain to give him what he seeks. 

On the seventh day, the sun must rise somewhere. Loki can feel it at the tips of his fingers, though his eyes cannot see a single ray of light. But the mountain speaks to him, there in the eye of that storm. 

_ What makes you think you can hold this shield, boy? What makes you think what makes you think what makes you think _ **_you are worthy_ ** _? _

“It’s not for me,” he tells the mountain, and for once he tells no lie. 

_ That’s what they say, _ the mountain rumbles beneath him, just barely beneath him.  _ But they also say you are a liar by trade, a deceiver of souls, a boy with a silver tongue.  _

“I am but a man,” he presses his hands to the rock, wills it to see his intentions. “Yet a man, but this time an honest one, and I seek this shield for a queen who would protect even you.” 

_ Might that she could _ , the stones shake. And he falls, he falls through the mountain with a drop of his gut as it opens at his feet. He does not think the caves he falls through exist on this realm- at least not to the Midgardians who live above them. There are streams between here and eternity that he swims through, never drowning high, never getting wet. When his eyes reopen, he stands at the base of the mountain with a glinting metal piece in his hand and a deep cut weeping red across his sternum. 

_ You paid the price for proof, _ the wind whispers in his ear.  _ Silly boy, foolish boy, still a boy. Do not go slowly in your quest. The fires are waking at the roots of the tree, and they know Loki Liesmith looks for a dowry befitting the queen. _

Deep beneath him, in the molten parts of Midgard, below the crust and the caves and the oceans, something blinks its eyes twice, and awakes.

\--

After dinner the night Stephanie returns, the moon is yellow and the rooftop garden is dark and misty as she lays in the damp grass, watching the cosmos spin above her. Even wide eyed at Stark’s future aspirations, there at the world fair, she couldn’t have imagined that she would one day traverse them. When she woke from the ice, Nick showed her a video, barely a day after she’d risen and run from their beds. 

“We made it to the moon,” he said to her, after setting a box down next to her labelled “MLK, Civil Rights, 60’s” full of cds. “Those are for later, catching you up, but for now- you gotta see this, Rogers. Howard Stark told us all about the things you wished on stars for, back when he worked with you for the research divisions. If there’s one thing that makes you decide to stay here, to not give up, let it be this. We made it to the moon.” 

He’d been right to show her, too. Because she was fascinated, horrified, in love with the history she’d missed, when it came down to it. She cried seven times over the tapes in that first box, and ten more reading first hand accounts on the internet. Her bones ached for days with the guilt of it all after she visited the museums in Washington D.C. and saw piles of shoes that belonged to the people she hadn’t been quick enough to save. But she could see determination, the kind that had brought her to the office of registration in the first place, when she watched the good doctor give his speeches. When she saw the fire that burnt in Malcolm X, and she visited her mother’s grave after reading about Roe v. Wade.  Her mother used to lay rosemary to ward off evil, and a primrose if she could get it for a mother’s love, at the cold stone beds of the cemetery. Sarah would visit all the women who died in the back alleys, or bleeding out before her in the hospital whites with a cold baby in their arms, or lying still and breathless beside their husbands as their child cried for milk. 

“You would have been proud, mama,” Stephanie had said, crossing herself and setting a bouquet of posies she’d bought from the Whole Foods down the street. Her mother would have never understood a market like that. But she would have liked it, nonetheless, in the way she always taught Stephanie to look forwards. To look towards the future. “You would have been so proud of how hard everyone here fights to sleep in a bed of peace, these days.” 

So the night sky reminds her of Sarah, and it reminds her of everything they had won, while she had been asleep, and everything they had lost. It hurts deep in her veins, sometimes, but the stars hadn’t changed in a century, and they weren’t going to change for a century more. Something remained constant, for her. 

“Stargazing?” a voice says beside her, after she’s had an hour of solitude, and she yelps, scrambles up into a sitting position, whirling around to find Bucky sprawled smugly in the grass with an eyebrow arched in her direction.

“Holy geez,” she says, “wanna warn a girl?” She takes a deep breath, shaking her head until the bits of grass float down, disappearing somewhere between her hair and the ground. He laughs, head thrown back like he used to when they watched celebrations for the Fourth of July at the big old park. Joyful underneath the moon. 

“Jumpy, Rogers.” he says, cocking his head to the side, his mouth curling up at the corner. He knows he’s right. She always did watch the stars when they used to camp out, during the war, if any were visible through the trees. Sometimes they were almost beautiful enough to make her fall asleep peacefully. 

“I don’t usually get anyone else out here,” she says, glancing back up at the stars above, their glimmering fire moving in a one-two-three-four waltz all too familiar from her old daydreams. “I don’t think a lot of people’s eyes can actually see the stars past the city lights. You haven’t joined me since we got back.” 

“I’m trying not to be so nocturnal, these days,” Bucky moves closer, wrapping his flesh and blood arm around her and leaning his head against hers. “I heard from someone important that normal humans like the daylight, and it happens this girl I like does too.” 

“So you’re following after her, then,” Stephanie jabs him with her elbow, softly. “You haven’t scared Darcy off yet?” He laughs into her hair, and kisses her temple messily, like he used to in the summer heat of Brooklyn when he’d finally have to make his way back home from her place. 

“I’m not as terrible as you give me credit for, Stephie.” Above them, a single cloud makes its way determinedly across the sky, illuminated silver in the light of the moon. “But I came here to ask you questions, not have it the other way around.” 

“Yeah, you got a lotta questions, Barnes,” she says, because she knows what’s coming. She’s not stupid, and Bucky isn’t either. But more than that, he’s persistent, and he has a right, maybe more than anyone in this base, to ask her questions. Sam hasn’t noticed yet- he’s been visiting his mother, and his new baby niece. Thor wouldn’t ask her questions when he already knows the answers, whether she wants him to or not. Clint is not observant when he doesn’t want to be, and Natasha never asks the questions, just finds the answers herself. Tony might- he might ask. But then again, his new prodigy (really their new prodigy, because Stephanie finds herself rather fond of him) is always getting into trouble and distracting him and Pepper. Wanda and Pietro give her space. 

So Bucky is it- he’s the one to ask. And maybe that’s good. Maybe she needs someone who will interrogate her. Maybe that’s part of why she likes Loki- he asks her hard questions, even when perhaps he should not. 

“You’ll never say shit out loud, golden girl,” Bucky jabs at her, but he’s gentle, as he drags them backwards to lie on the grass again. “I know you, I know you better than anyone here. You’ve fallen in something much bigger than any of us, and I can see you trying not to run scared.”

“Have I ever run scared?” She asks, though they both know the answer. He ignores her. 

“I thought you couldn’t find something this big. I thought- she’ll be fine. A world war? No problem. We technically made it out alive. But you went and found a whole universe out there without me, and by the time I came around you’d already gotten stuck in the hero’s chariot again.” 

“I don’t mean to worry you-”

“For god’s sake, for the love of all we used to consider holy, Stephanie Grace,” he huffs, but he doesn’t mean it. If Bucky had been bothered by her stubbornness he would have left years ago. “You know I’ll be by your side if I have to fight for the rest of my life. I would give up my peace for you. But you don’t want to fight forever, and I know that. And you don’t have to. When this war is over, there’ll be another. There’ll always be someone who needs your help. I thought you’d get over it. I thought you’d see he isn’t worth it. But it’s been months, and I’m not dumb.” 

For a long moment, the wind blows past them with the sweetness of spring, the blooms above and below. They both ache for simpler times. But they can find happiness in this one, if either of their stubborn hearts would allow it. It is a scary and unfamiliar world, and it grows more unfamiliar every day, but they don’t face it alone. 

She never felt more helpless than when she woke without his hand in hers. At least now she knows it will always be there, no matter what portals open up before her, or what stars choose to fall upon their little planet. 

“I love you, Stephie,” Bucky murmurs into her shoulder. “I know more than anyone that you deserve to find your peace here. I don’t know- maybe I don’t like him because he reminds me of how small we are in this creation. Maybe I don’t like him because old grudges are hard to bear. Maybe I don’t like him because I know damn well there will never be anyone who’d deserve you. But I don’t have to like him to know you could love him, and he could love you, and in the end. Well. I could learn to like him well enough if he could at least do that one thing right.” 

The moon watches her cry, but Bucky does her the dignity of not mentioning how many times she has to wipe her tears before they go back down into the base and turn in for the night. 

\--

The wind told him to hurry, but he cannot- hurry towards what? Another dead end? With two pieces burning a hole in his knapsack and four more waiting out there for him, he is acutely aware of how far from victory he stands. Somewhere deep in his heart, Loki knew that this would not be easily won. What was easy- winning the Lævateinn? Winning his freedom from the Norns? No, nothing is easily won in the nine realms, nor beyond it. Not when the prize is so great. He was once wished glory greater than that blood which Lævateinn could earn him in battle. Is this it? 

There are places on this planet that he cannot bear to stand, for they burn hotter than Muspelheim ever did. But he finds himself in the desert, wandering sands that have long since swallowed the bones of men he might have met when visiting Midgard long ago. Loki had been here once, with Thor and the Warriors Three. He remembers Fandral standing at the edge of the river and mocking a lizard, a crocodile. The brilliant blue of lapis, and the way a great priestess of the time had caught his eye. 

“I did not know that Midgard held magic,” Loki had said to his brother, watching the woman from the shadows, and Thor simply laughed.

“You do not know a great many things, brother,” he’d said, clapping Loki on the back and striding forth in torchlight to join the festivities. “And greatest among them is the way sei∂r always finds its way wherever life may spring.” 

She spilled his blood underneath the hot sun of her homeland and then together they watched the moon rise above the stones her king ordered risen high towards the heavens. If Loki tried hard enough he could find where she rests, in the dark of her pyramid chambers. He gave her some of his magic, and she gave him some of hers, and he knows now how foolish he had been. To let this human woman taste the breadth of the universe. She could have kept him here, if she had been less wise and he more easily bent. But now he comes for a different woman, and in a different time, and the cars drive on shimmering asphalt between the structures he once saw built new. 

Now he comes not for a priestess, but for a queen. 

He walks seventeen dunes, feet light on the burning hills, before one calls out to his bones. It drags him deep, and he has to break through stone untouched by man for decades to get to glowing light beneath the sands. 

_ Oh, you are brash, _ the stones around him say, drawing shadows close to his figure. They swallow up his torchlight and they press suffocation on his lungs.  _ Bold, bold, bold.  _

The piece of the shield lies coiled in the grasp of a snake far larger than any Loki has seen on Earth before. 

“Oh, little Jormungandr,” Loki murmurs, voice lilting as he wraps his hand around his blade. “Like my child, fierce and hale. Do you not wish for sun to warm your blood?” The snake hisses at him, baring fangs, and Loki simply laughs. This he knows. Snakes are his way- they are his tongue, they are his kin. He birthed a snake to kill the Aesir one day, and he may birth another before his time is up. 

“Have this,” he says, “instead of daylight, child mine.” The fire in his hands burns blinding, crackling as the shadows try to press it in. The snake moves towards the light, the warmth, the hope of day, and he grabs the shield piece quicker than its venomous strike. The stones around them laugh. They swallow the snake whole, and then, they swallow Loki’s eyes too. 

_ Bold, bold,  _ **_bold_ ** , they say, and their laugh is deafening in this chamber.  _ To steal from us that which we protect. I hope the price is worth it, Silvertongue. _

He feels the dunes beneath his feet again, and all is blackness before his eyes for a week as he wanders the sand, paying the penance of theft. The first thing he sees when his eyesight returns, between one blink and the next, is the same moon he knows Stephanie must be seeing too. 

Loki keeps walking. 

\--

June dawns like a heart attack- hits painful and sharp and sudden, when a series of terrorist attacks draw the Avengers out of their base to the front lines. God, she hates this war. This work. These people. 

She watches children bleed in Wanda’s arms, and Pietro takes them from his sister to run them towards the nearest source of help. She watches Tony burn his own hands on a generator trying to get power back to a hospital. She watches shrapnel hit Bucky like it’s a slow motion movie, clanging off his metal arm and getting stuck in his thigh. He heals so quick they have to dig it out of him with a knife. In the end, she is exhausted, after they spend three weeks out on the road just doing relief efforts and letting Natasha, Sam, and Clint do the field work of tracking the culprits down. 

They add another medal to her chest, like they always do, but this time she doesn’t show up to receive it. She’s so goddamn exhausted that she can practically feel the Earth pulling her down. For a minute there, on the plane back home, three days out from her last meal and starving on her own enhanced metabolism, Stephanie almost wishes she could call Death and ask for rest at last. But the moment passes, and so she stumbles off the quinjet and into her bed for a full two days, after scarfing down twelve protein bars and two shakes. 

For the first time since he left, she wishes out loud to herself that Loki had been there beside her. Perhaps because his magic could have done something- changed some tide. He can’t go back in time, but he could have been faster than she was. He could have been someone to lean on. Instead, she bleeds alone, and heals her own wounds in the ringing silence of her bedroom, answering her wish with nothing but a blankness she cannot fathom past. Maybe her mother would have had an answer for her. Maybe Frigga would have one now. 

Regardless, when she finally drags herself out into the kitchen, she doesn’t ask any more questions or make any more wishes. 

Peace, peace, peace- that’s what Bucky had said she wanted, right? That she deserved it. Stephanie never feels less deserving of peace than after a battle, after watching the way war touches civilians and leaves ugly, rotting wounds in its path. But she is only one woman, and she is only so much. The book Frigga gave her lies on her desk, waiting for her to open it. The battle, the aftermath, the terrorists- it’s a week before Stephanie even thinks of it again. 

A week, though, out of two months since she’d received it, and skirted around and away from it every time her eyes fell upon its golden pages. 

“You’re like a test I’m trying not to study for,” she whispers to it, as she sits at her desk and opens to its first page. Maybe she would have been a bad college student after all. 

Somewhere, across the world, with his feet trapped in vines and his teeth sunk into leaves, Loki feels her crack open the book. His heart stops, restarts. They are alive. They are alive. Stephanie can touch his sei∂r from thousands of miles away, and when she opens the book she touches the heart of the Mother Earth. It breathes beneath them like a heaving beast, fingers clawing their way towards the surface. 

Foolish, foolish, foolish- did Amma know what she was doing? Did she know she was sending fire and brimstone to Midgard? Loki can feel something unravelling, growing closer. Like a shark beneath the water, teeth opened wide, there is a slow approaching dread he can only watch grow bigger towards the woman he has been fighting for. 

She does not feel it. 

She does not know. 

She does not stop. 

The first pages are simple, just pictures, no words. Pictures of a shield, and a woman with no face hidden behind armor of leather and silver. She holds the shield up towards a blazing fire, a ball of teeth, and the great roots of an ancient tree. It looks like the tree on Thor’s clothing, the ceremonial kind he wears to go back home. 

On the fifth page-

_ It will not be an ancient queen who weaves the realms together.  _

_ But instead, a new blood rises from the fields of war.  _

_ She be but small, and mortal still, and kind to who defies her.  _

_ But she will grow the tree again, and kill the beast who tries her. _

Loki feels sick to his stomach in a temple of green, his hands blindly grasping at the fourth piece of the shield. When the trees cackle at him he stumbles out of their realm and finds himself gasping for air on the ground, tasting blood in his mouth. 

Half a world away, Stephanie tastes the same blood in her mouth. 

She falls from her chair. 

\--

By the time Thor finds him, Loki is already wild-eyed and across the oceans, striding with determination towards the base through the field that lies before it. He’s practically to the front lawn when Thor touches down beside him, resting a hand on his elbow to stop him in his tracks. 

“You know what it is,” Thor says, voice thunderous and eyes crackling with the lightning of his name. 

“I know what it will be,” Loki replies, and Thor’s breath is like petrichor on his skin as he leans his forehead against Loki’s like he has not in too many years. Like they used to before following each other to battle. 

“I told them you would come,” his older brother says. His first reaction is to feel surprised, but deep down, he isn’t. Thor must know, by now. What he’s been doing, out in the wilds of Midgard. What he’s been searching for. Who, exactly, he’s been searching for. “That you would not let her leave the way Sigyn did.” 

“Don’t say her name,” he hisses, though the malice is not there.  “She is not Sigyn, and she never will be. I have come to stop the sickness before it takes hold. But I cannot undo the damage, and you do her a disservice by assuming she would let go that easily.” He shoves off his brother’s hand, and continues on his way towards the front doors, trusting Thor will tell him if he goes in the wrong direction. 

“I won’t stand in your way,” Thor says to his back, following close behind. “I know enough of sei∂r to know this is only the first of her challenges.” 

They make it almost all of the way to Stephanie’s room, through the crowd of hovering Avengers, before he speaks again. 

“And I know you set on a path to love her, brother,” Thor whispers between them, in a voice that only Loki can hear. “So I stand aside, and let you love her, as you have sworn to the realms you’ll do.” 

\--

When Stephanie wakes, the bed is too hard, the room too cold and yet too hot, and she doesn’t recognize this feeling. She hasn’t been sick in something like seventy years, but when she tries to raise her head to turn on the lamp or figure out exactly who the shadows in the room are, everything spins, and it becomes clear. A fever is wracking her bones, the bedclothes seem leaden, her limbs won’t cooperate. She can’t breathe. Her eyes won’t focus. Something is desperately, desperately wrong, because super soldiers don’t just get  _ sick _ , especially not sick like  _ this _ . She touched a book, she was just reading a book. And Frigga had said it was safe.  Her heartbeat is fluttering in her chest like a hummingbird, panic threading through her veins as she tries to speak. To say something, anything at all to try and reach out towards the shadows and get help. She feels a little pathetic for the whimpering gasp of her breath, before one of the shadows is standing over her, bending down. The shadow smells like spearmint, and- Loki. It’s Loki. 

He shushes her, a cool hand on her forehead, and she does not resist her instinct to push into it. It feels good, a soothing balm on the aching hell of her head right now. 

“You’re very ill, darling Captain,” he says quietly, his thumb pressing gently to her temple when she whimpers at a spiking stab of pain swelling in her side. 

“Do not fear,” he murmurs. “I shall not let you come to harm.” 

And, strangely enough, that comforts her. Enough to convince her to let go to her tenuous and difficult grasp upon consciousness. 

The last thing she knows before the darkness crashes over her once more is the green of his eyes. 

\--

Tony shouts at him, and Peter beats at the doorway with his fists. Thor stands quietly, as does Bucky, watching Stephanie with unfathomable shadows in their eyes. Jane comes to lay a hand on her forehead, as does Darcy, because they have the camaraderie of living in a man’s world, and carving a place for themselves. Pepper crosses her arms and sets her jaw, and refuses to let Tony’s loud words get to her. Clint perches at the end of the bed, a watcher and a waiter. Natasha doesn’t appear to come at all, though Loki knows she must have because he can almost smell the red trail of worry she leaves behind. Sam makes his way back from D.C. to sit by her bedside, a magazine in hand and a stern gaze for him. 

“I did this before, and I will do it again, so help me,” Sam says to Bucky, raising an eyebrow when the man makes to protest. “You don’t have to be the only one worrying after her, Barnes.” 

Sam says no such thing to Loki, only watches him when he thinks Loki isn’t paying attention. He knows, as they all must know, but he lets Loki keep his silence. 

Wanda and Pietro do not cry inside the room, Loki knows they do when they go back to their bedrooms. Nick does not come inside the room at all, but stands in the doorway, and does not even spare a glance for Loki- not one, the whole week he works and weaves and waits for Stephanie to wake up. 

The book has put a sickness on her. More so, really, the earth beneath her has put the sickness on her. A sickness of ice and fire, alternately- she burns up with fever, and then shivers as her temperature drops more than he thought it possible for a human to survive. The woman before him killed a monster that Queen Amma birthed from shadows and poison, in her fire pits. She woke up the beast that lies curled at the roots of the Yggdrasil, with her power. Her light. 

Of course the book has put a sickness on her, because a gladiator who might enter the pit of the Universe cannot simply show up one day and hope to best the House’s own hand. Loki burns because he knows damn well the types of trials he and his brother had to fight through. He knows what Frigga fought through, and what blood Odin spilled- his own eye, even, for the knowledge that the Universe could give. The Norns are even beyond this, because it comes down to the balance that survives beyond everything. Beyond him, and his blood. Beyond the stars, the beginnings, the seeds that planted the Yggdrasil in the first place. 

Everything in the Universe sought balance- through evil, and good. Through neutral. Through the grays that haunted the mortal men, and the regrets that haunted immortal ones. Each atom spun, shared electrons, to seek balance. To seek the noble cause of one day finding stability, perfection. Peace. 

And he hated that balance, in these moments, watching Stephanie fight for breath. 

“She can’t catch a fucking break,” Bucky mutters, leaving the room on the sixth day when Darcy comes to drag him to sleep, even for an hour. 

“It is but the second trial,” Thor says, just minutes before Stephanie opens her eyes. “I know, just as you know, what mother has seen. What father has done. I know, as you know, the blood we spilled and the ones we lost to the balance.” 

“She is strong,” Loki says, though he does not meet Thor’s eyes. “She will make it to the summit, brother.” 

When Stephanie wakes again, finally, seven days after he had first placed his hand on her forehead, she immediately doubles up and vomits blood all down the front of his shirt. Somehow, he does not find it in himself to mind. Perhaps because he’s too busy drawing a sigil in that blood upon her cheek, and catching her limp body against his own. 

\--

It takes six hours to finish the spell he weaves upon her when she wakes. Not the longest one he’s ever done, but enough to wipe him out. He falls unconscious when he’s finished it, and Thor informs him when he finally comes to that they’ve taken Stephanie to a SHIELD hospital to recuperate- that she’s finally through the sei∂r part of this, and can rest in the arms of modern medicine instead. 

“This is the end of Captain America, for now,” Nick says grimly, sitting in the kitchen with the rest of the Avengers and Loki, reading the report the hospital has sent over from their initial workups. “I can’t put her back in the field like this- not for months.” 

“I don’t know what they’ve done to her,” Tony says, after the silence becomes too much for them to bear under the weight of Nick’s proclamation. “But it was done the first moment Thor touched down. This is bigger than terrorists in other countries, now. It’s bigger than making a woman fight your wars for a century and still not being satisfied.” Bucky bites his lip bloody beside him, and Pepper just rests a calm hand on Tony’s shoulder, as he shakes. For all his bravado, his spiteful fights with Stephanie. The hero worship of his father that had poisoned their dynamic. He does love her, as a sister that he’d only ever watched from afar. The eldest child, gone from the home before he even entered it. 

“Captain America could be done forever, for all I care,” Tony says, slapping a hand on the table and speaking so fast that Loki can hardly keep up. “I want to know if Stephanie is coming back.” Nick just bows his head, and Natasha can’t meet any of their eyes- she was the one who travelled with Stephanie, and brought back the papers their director holds in his hands. 

Peter bursts into tears at the end of the table. 

Nick’s silence is only a bitter taste in their mouths. 

\--

It is touch and go and touch and go. 

Frigga visits them in their dreams and does not say a word, just kisses their foreheads and leaves him sprigs of mistletoe and thyme that make their pillows smell of gardens in the morning. Thor comes to him when the sun rises to ask if she had left Loki omens too. 

Ice envelops Loki’s skin when he sleeps, and Thor dreams of flames that never end. 

_ Was it worth it? Was it worth it? Are you sure she is a queen? _

\--

On the advent of the third week, Loki travels to a peninsula in the Mediterranean sea, and sinks himself beneath the waves. The water is clear, clear blue and beautiful. The sun shines spitefully, when he knows how sour and cloudy it is over the Avengers’ base these days. Thor cannot be persuaded to bring the sunshine back, and Jane doesn’t have the heart to push him harder. 

_ Will you fight for her?  _ the depths beneath him ask.  _ Will you fight for her? _

I would fight by the blade of my people, and I would die by the blade of hers. 

_ Blood is good enough.  _ The kelp wraps around his legs and drags him down until his breath is nothing in his chest. The darkness of the deep blue sea envelops him, blinds him, and below him is the silver of the shield. The fifth piece. 

_ You still wish to pay your prices, little liesmith, silvertongue?  _

His veins cloud the water with blood but the sharks don’t come and the waves still bring him back to shore, and he is weak for hours, gasping on the sands. But he is alive. 

_ Almost a full dowry for her _ , the ocean says to him.  _ If she survives you long enough _ . 

Loki hates the weight of Lævateinn on his thigh and the lightness of the shield in his knapsack. But he returns to the base, and he stays away from her bedside. Like his presence might be a curse- isn’t that what lead him to fall in the first place? He had fallen into the stars and let himself believe that he might be a poison upon any who would spend their time in his company. 

_ Be brave, be brave, be bold,  _ his mother whispers in his ear. 

He closes his eyes, and he does not let himself look for the number on her door, or the location they are keeping her. 

_ Be patient, Silvertongue.  _

\--

She gets out of the SHIELD hospital on a Tuesday afternoon. 

Creaking, aching, bewildered. A month underwater and a month of her life lost- all in all, not that much to adjust to compared to years she’s lost before. 

They give her a couple months of leave, tell her she’s accumulated quite a bit, and she takes Tony up on his offer of a small house in a small seaside town in California. She gardens, sowing vegetables and herbs in the backyard. She visits the bookstore on the prosaic little main street of the town. She drinks hot chocolate with her cinnamon bun in the morning, and tells herself that she isn’t itching from how alone she feels here, without any of her teammates or friends to spar with, or to protect, or to simply be around. She sits on the porch most days of the week and watches the dawn rise up, washing a rose and gold glow over the waves and the beaches and the other small houses, She sits on the porch again in the evening, watching the twilight deepen into night, and the stars blink into sight one by one above her. 

She doesn’t bring the book with her. 

She doesn’t think of it at all- because she can’t. Because she won’t. 

“Let yourself heal,” Thor said, his hand so heavy on her forehead she felt he might put her back to sleep. “Book do not rot in months, let alone in years. You know Frigga would be gentle with you, and so you must be gentle with yourself.” 

After three and a half weeks of the slowly growing solitude gnawing at her stomach like a particularly strong, insatiable hunger, this is where Loki finds her. 

He does her the courtesy of not simply appearing at her side- instead, he walks down the little block to the little white picket gate covered in creeping jasmine and honeysuckle, and gently opens and closes it. He walks up her little stone path, surrounded by forget-me-nots and daisies, and sits down beside her on the swinging bench. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and neither does she, and that- that’s ok. The moon has been up for quite a while when she finally stirs, standing from the bench and walking to the door, expecting that he will follow. He, strangely enough, does as she expects. She leads him through the living room, the dining room set for one, into the kitchen. 

“I have hot chocolate,” she says, finally, no hello nor question as is their wont, and all he does is laugh.

“Oh Captain, my Captain,” he says. “ _ Still _ my Captain, it seems.” 

“I like hot chocolate too,” she shrugs, but he knows, like he’s always known, that the hot chocolate was not only for her. Her solitude hasn’t gone unchallenged in many months, ever since the two of them had found themselves trapped in that enchanted cell, telling stories of the rare idylls of their youth and shivering uncomfortably in their least natural forms. She knew, deep down, that he would be the one to make first contact. And here he is, watching her put the kettle on, grab the milk, set out two mugs full of mahogany powder. “Did the God of Chaos need a vacation from wreaking havoc?” she asks quietly after the kettle beeps, pouring boiling water into the mugs and stirring. 

“A vacation from the moping melancholy surrounding the fortress since your departure, more like,” he snorts, waving his elegant fingers in a dismissive gesture and glancing away. “They are surprisingly unable to maintain unshakeable, obnoxious optimism without you there to provide it.”

For all the months between them, the years, the battles, the blood. For all the war has done to bring them to this moment- for once. For once, it is easy, to sit down at her hearth, and be warmed.

 

\--

She wakes up before he does, the barest hint of dawn seeping through the cracks in her curtains to splay its cold glow over his bared back, his calm face.

They fell asleep together but not touching- there are no words between them. But they hadn't talked much about emotions anyway. Neither of them are good at opening up, cracking their ribcages and spilling forth what lies within. 

She can be content with this. 

She can let herself feel peace, when she knows another storm will come for them soon enough. 

Bucky (and her therapist) would be proud. 

\--

The storm rolled in on the little coastal town with few warning signs, catching all of them off guard. Stephanie had been out in the garden, weeding her small patch of vegetables and pulling squash flowers for fritters, when the clouds had gusted across the afternoon sun. The first drops of rain followed soon after, crashing down heavily, with determination. They’d barely hit her cheeks before he was in the door, his eyes darker than the storm, watching it gather faster and faster on the horizon. 

“Perhaps you’d better come inside, Captain,” Loki said, leaning up against the doorjamb, looking infuriatingly fitting in his henley and jeans and long, bare feet. “Being exposed to a storm is not wise for someone with a recovering constitution.” She grumbled and griped, but he was right, so she gathered her tools and her basket of blossoms and pickings, and trudged up the steps as the rain began to fall harder. It wasn’t like him to fuss, to be uncalm, though now he shut the door firmly behind her and locked it tightly, drawing the curtains. “Go on, dry off,” he shooed her away from the doors, his brow slightly furrowed. She was rather damper than she’d thought, her shoulders soaked and her hair weighed down, but Stephanie had already been forced in from her gardening and there were only so many of his orders she’d take before she felt a smirk and a little bit of nuisance tugging at her chest. 

The squash blossoms got set on a towel to dry, the trimmings went into the compost, the tools went up in the cabinet, and Loki hovered behind her the whole time, his eyes boring a hole in the back of her skull. 

“Are you trying to become ill simply to spite me?” he snapped. “Is it really worth that?” 

“Calm,” Stephanie said, trying to contain her laughter. “I’m only a little damp, alright? Let me square this away and then I’ll change.” 

“Do not play so lightly with your own mortality, Captain,” Loki hissed, his voice lowering enough to give her pause. She closed the cabinet, turning towards him, to find him an unholy terror behind her, his hair wilder than before and his eyes flashing. 

“You’re not my nursemaid, Loki,” she said quietly, crossing her arms and meeting his gaze. “A few minutes in damp clothes won’t kill me.” He scoffed. 

“You truly don’t understand how fragile you still are, after that illness,” he waved his hand, the gesture so casual in spite of his clear ire, and a fire sprung up in the living room fireplace, right before the big shag rug Tony had somehow managed to put in there. “You will always be fragile, always moments away from death. No need to hasten that end, not when there are soldiers out there who still await the return of your command like dithering, directionless idiots.” 

“That’s the biggest compliment you’ve ever given the Avengers,” Stephanie remarked, a smile tugging at the edge of her mouth, and he just glared until she put her hands up and began backing towards her bedroom. “Yes, yes, I understand, I’m fragile, and I’m going to go change.” His face softened slightly, and then relaxed in one fell swoop, his broad shoulders turning towards the living room and the crackling fire. By the time she had pulled on a sweater and some sweatpants, thick socks warming her feet, he was cross legged in front of the fire, watching the window intently out of the corner of his eye. The storm was raging, now. Rain battered the house, the trees creaking, and the ocean was audibly roaring over the shrieking of the winds. 

“Better?” she asked him, sitting down on the rug as well. 

“Less likely to contract another illness, yes,” Loki snipped, his long fingers pulling idly at the soft threads of the shag rug. 

After an hour has passed, he finds it impossible to keep the silence. Curiosity here, in a place where they cannot be interrupted, has become a curse. Over the days with her, removed from the bigger picture, he wants to know more and more. Like an addictive substance, the truths of her past are balm to his racing mind and his sparking sei∂r, just waiting for the battle to resume. 

 

“I find it hard to believe that no one, out of all the vastness of New York, managed to recognize the spirit you possess,” he says lowly, into the firelight, seeking more of what he has been asking for, since he arrived in her seaside idyll. 

“Peggy did,” Stephanie says ruefully. “Erskine saw it first, but Peggy knew it was true before Erskine dared to believe it, I think. Before he had the chance to see his dreams all come true. Peggy knew it, and then Bucky saw it realized, and the Commandos knew me only as the Captain, never as the girl.” 

“I cannot help but feel you were wasted on them,” Loki says. “All but Miss Carter, perhaps.” She regards him with an old wound in her eyes, her hand slowing to a stop, her whole body gone still. “As sentimental as it is, and for all that sentimentality has always been the fault of Frigga and Thor more than it has been mine, I should have wished you would have found the love that you deserve, Stephanie.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, after a moment of silence, the crackling of fire and the storm the only sounds beyond the beat of her heart. “I think I’ve got that one covered.” She wants to laugh, just a little hysterical with her own boldness. Convalescing in a seaside home, sitting in front of a fire with a man from another world, putting the moves on someone she has fought against and, nearly more confusingly, beside. They are something mercurial, some gray area where neither of them are captain or warrior, fighting no battles while they rest at each other’s sides. Something akin to respect blooms between them, but so does something more. Understanding, and camaraderie, and, despite all of Stephanie’s screaming common sense, a deeper set of emotions she cannot deny.

She thinks that they are friends. She thinks that, maybe, they could be something else as well.

When he wishes for her to find love, they both know that he is wishing for her to find it in him. 

Maybe that's what sparks between them, that night. Perhaps that is what finally burns their defenses down. They have been waiting a year, more, since they met eyes on Asgard, for the fruition of this thing that has been pulling them closer and closer together. Perhaps call it passion- or fate. Pretentious enough for Stephanie's tastes. She will call it comfort, when his fingers brush her hair back from her face, and he meets her mouth with his. For now, it is comfort, because they know the blades will be unsheathed again soon. For now, it is solace and safety.

For now, it is the promise of something more. 

There is nothing here between their in the eye of the storm, as his hands grasp her hips and pull her down to straddle his lap, as his palm creeps up the side of her body, of her neck. Her face must be red, but his eyes are so intensely focused on her she can’t remember to check, or to be embarrassed. His thighs are strong beneath her, and his shoulders steady when she braces her own hands on them. 

Her breath seems caught in her chest as his fingers curl slowly through her hair, grasping firmly and tugging once, spurring heat in her belly. It’s hard not to feel vulnerable with his nose skims across the arched line of her throat, his hand in her hair pulling her back into a curve that leaves her clinging to him for support. His lips brush her collarbone, the hollow of her throat, and then the tip of her chin, before she’s opening her eyes (when did she close them?) to find his eyes dark with a hunger that makes her shiver. His hips move, and his thighs, and her head drops to the carpet before her back, cradled by his hand. 

When he rests over her on his hands and knees, his hair hanging around his face, hers spilling out like a halo on the carpet, she’s struck by her own all-consuming hunger, and her hands grasp at him frantically enough to scrabble over the edges of the knit shirt he’s wearing. He doesn’t laugh at her, simply coming closer so that she can wrap herself around him the way she needs to (needs to so desperately.) 

“I missed something I never got to have,” he says against her collarbone, against her suddenly bared shoulder. “I thought I had lost my chance, when I saw you there, in the grasp of the fever.” She shudders, his warm hand coming to rest flat against her naked stomach and pressing gently. Somehow, the sweep of his thumb across her lower stomach is more erotic than his teeth upon her shoulder, and she moans for it, arching into his touch. The curses spill fluidly from her lips when he bends to place a kiss between his index and his thumb on her stomach, his breath blowing ticklishly into her navel for a brief moment. She’s restless, full of an energy that wants her to move her hips, so she gives in just a little and lets them squirm. That gets her bared legs as well, and hands pressing pink shapes into her thighs, which he hooks over the same broad shoulders she’d braced herself on. 

“Beautiful,” he murmurs against the crook of her hip. Her eyes clench shut hard enough to hurt when he ducks, drags the flat of his tongue over her clit relentlessly and suddenly. Stephanie’s hands are tangled up in his hair, but he doesn’t seem to mind the rough treatment. On the contrary, he’s panting and moaning in a manner most indecorous for one of any royal court with every tug. 

“Fuck,  _ fuck _ ,” she groans, twisting, her thighs clenching around his shoulders. He laughs into the skin of her inner thigh, nipping at it and sucking until it turns purple as one of his long fingers slides slowly inside her. She’s dripping, his face a mess of her, but she’s never cared less. She can’t see anything but the ceiling, and then bright bursts of color behind her eyes from squeezing them shut so tight when his mouth closes around her clit once more and two fingers are curling up and rubbing from the inside. Breath is hard to come by- it seems like her entire abdomen is clenching up so tightly she can barely draw it in, so her mouth simply forms weak whimpering sounds when Loki presses even harder. The thing about this mountain is that unlike any other orgasms she’s had before, she’s climbing well past the point where she thinks she should have fallen. 

His tongue is maddening, burning, her toes are cramping and her head is swimming and her stomach feels like it’s knotted itself just below her navel. 

She’s a beautiful mess beneath him and he curls his infuriating lips around her clit and sucks, crooking his fingers and pressing and rubbing mercilessly until she’s screaming silently and coming hard enough to gush sweetly all down his wrist.  

“Ah, ah-h ah,” she pants out, trying to speak but managing only weak sounds as she twists once more, bucking and letting out a high pitched sigh when he ducks back down to lick her once more. His grin is predatory, smug, his chin resting on her stomach while her chest heaves. His faint, faint stubble scratches slightly, leaving behind brief pink patches. Her hands are so gentle in his hair now, smoothing gently through the loose brown waves as she calms slightly. 

“Satisfied, darling Captain?” he laughs against her hip, kissing his way up her ribs until he can suck a red, swollen nipple into his mouth. She squirms a little beneath him, her fingers turning sharp once more, and she sighs. 

“I hope you’re not thinking you’re getting out of fucking me into that absurdly large mattress,” she says breathlessly after a moment, laughing at his moment of shock at her bluntness. “Because that was great, don’t get me wrong, but please tell me that giant bed isn’t going to go to waste.” And then- he laughs as well.

For the moment, they are warm. 


End file.
